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 include human optic nerve, zebrafish cornea and rhesus monkey and cow lens. 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 powerful 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. In addition, NEIBank now incorporates data from the EyeSAGE project (Duke U) with a custom genome browser track for human eye-derived SAGE data. Another addition is a comprehensive database of human eye disease genes.
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