"NEIBANK: EST Analysis and Bioinformatics for Ocular Genomics"

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The eye is a complex system of highly differentiated tissues of various developmental origins. Many genes essential for eye function are tissue-specific and many of those known are associated with genetic eye diseases. The majority of human expressed genes are known only through expressed sequence tags (ESTs). However many eye tissues have been poorly represented in the cDNA libraries that have so far contributed to dbEST. To address this situation a project, NEIBANK, has been initiated to improve the EST coverage of the human eye. cDNA libraries for human lens, ciliary body/iris,RPE/choroid, retina and cornea have been constructed and examined by in-depth sequencing. Typically 2000 clones from each un-normalized library have been sequenced, analyzed and clustered. Libraries for rat iris/ciliary body/TM and retina have also been created. Several novel genes have been identified, including Oculoglycan (an eye-specific LRR protein whose gene maps close to ARMD), lengsin (LGS)(an abundant lens specific transcript related to glutamine synthestase), Oculospanin (a novel tetraspan that maps to chr17, close to the disease locus RP17), Iris-derived growth factor (a VEGF relative) and many others. Lens and iris libraries have been normalized for deeper sequence. The RPE library has produced over 8000 sequences. So far approximately 20,000 ocular cDNA clones, representing about 10,000 individual clusters (potential genes), have been sequenced and organized in a web-based database that contains keyword and chromosomal location data. This resource is now being used to create micro-arrays for ocular studies.