A set of 840 mouse oocyte genes with well-matched human homologues

GenBank contains 14 477 expressed sequence tags (EST) derived from mouse oo cyte cDNA libraries: 3499 of these are from two unfertilized oocyte librari es and 10 978 are from two fertilized oocyte libraries. Gene expression pro files were obtained for these libraries by matching library EST to UniGene clusters. The 14 477 EST identified 4226 UniGenes, These were screened usin g HomoloGene to identify 1386 homologous UniGene clusters in two other spec ies with one of the matches being human. Within these human matches, 840 en coded named proteins, 223 encoded hypothetical proteins, and 323 encoded cl ustered EST The set of named genes provides the first step in establishing a database of genes expressed in mouse oocytes and, by extension, human ooc ytes.