A CATALOG OF GENES IN THE CARDIOVASCULAR-SYSTEM AS IDENTIFIED BY EXPRESSED SEQUENCE TAGS

The heart, which is composed of all the cellular components of the cir culatory system, is a representative organ for obtaining genes express ed in the cardiovascular system in normal and disease states. We used partial sequences of cDNA clones, or expressed sequence tags, to ident ify and tag genes expressed in this organ. More than 3500 partial sequ ences representing >3000 cDNA clones have been obtained from either th e 5' or 3' end of inserts derived from human heart cDNA libraries, Of 3132 cDNA clones analyzed by sequence similarity searching against the GenBank/EMBL data bases, 1485 (47.4%) were found to represent additio nal, previously undiscovered genes, whereas 267 clones were matched to human brain expressed sequence tags. Clones matching to known genes w ere catalogued according to their putative structural and cellular fun ctions. cDNA probes from reverse transcribed mRNAs of fetal and adult hearts were used to study differential expression of selected clones i n cardiac development. Cataloguing genes expressed in the heart may pr ovide insight into the genes involved in health and cardiovascular dis ease.