NEIBank--EST Analysis/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). A project called NEIBank was begun to improve the EST coverage and to develop a molecular encyclopedia for the eye (http://neibank.nei.nih.gov). Many human eye (and also ear) tissues and those of important animal models have now been analyzed. Recent additions are human and mouse lacrimal gland, human keratoconus cornea, human pterygium and multiple tissue libraries from dog, rabbit, chicken, guinea pig and zebrafish tissues. The human DNA resource generated by this work has been used to create cDNA microarrays with 13,000 non-redundant human eye expressed sequences and 6500 sequences from mouse eye. A recent addition to the informatics tools for eye research is EyeBrowse, a dedicated genome browser for eye-expressed genes, produced in collaboration with CIT. http://eyebrowse.cit.nih.gov/genome/ ; a database for known human eye disease genes and a new tool to compare expression patterns of different tissues and species.