Characterization of novel and identified genes in guinea pig organ of corti.
A number of proteins are expressed in the organ of Corti and are considered to be responsible for hearing. However, most of them have not been identified. Therefore, to achieve a better understanding of the genetic factors influencing these traits, the first step is to characterize the genes expressed in the organ of Corti. In the present study, a cDNA library was constructed from the guinea pig organ of Corti. After sequencing isolated clones, 196 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were identified with FASTA analysis: 65 ESTs showed significant sequence homology to previously identified genes in guinea pig, human or other species, and 131 ESTs showed no significant matches to sequences already present in the DNA database DDBJ/GenBank/EMBL. A variety of matching sequences, some of which were known to be cochlea-specific, were found through FASTA analysis of the 65 clones. RT-PCR with a panel of 10 different tissue mRNA revealed the restricted expression of 13 unknown clones. The results of our analysis allowed the establishment of a list of genes expressed in the guinea pig organ of Corti.
Oshima
T
T
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, 1-1 Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8574, Japan. oshima@orl.med.tohoku.ac.jp
Nakajima
T
T
Wada
H
H
Ikeda
K
K
Takasaka
T
T
D000818:Animals; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000235:genetics; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005796:Genes / Q000235:genetics*; D006168:Guinea Pigs / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009928:Organ Specificity; D009925:Organ of Corti / Q000378:metabolism*; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000032:analysis / Q000235:genetics; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017385:Sequence Homology
D018076:DNA, Complementary; D012333:RNA, Messenger