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 identif ied. Therefore, to achieve a better understanding of the genetic factors in fluencing these traits, the first step is to characterize the genes express ed in the organ of Corti. In the present study, a cDNA library was construc ted from the guinea pig organ of Corti. After sequencing isolated clones, 1 96 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were identified with FASTA analysis: 65 E STs showed significant sequence homology to previously identified genes in guinea pig, human or other species, and 131 ESTs showed no significant matc hes to sequences already present in the DNA database DDBJ/ GenBank/EMBL. A variety of matching sequences, some of which were known to be cochlea-speci fic, were found through FASTA analysis of the 65 clones. RT-PCR with a pane l of 10 different tissue mRNA revealed the restricted expression of 13 unkn own clones. The results of our analysis allowed the establishment of a list of genes expressed in the guinea pig organ of Corti. (C) 2000 Academic Pre ss.