Characterization of Gene Expression Profiles of Normal Canine Retina and Brain Using a Retinal cDNA Microarray

Microarrays have been useful in the simultaneous analysis of transcript levels of thousands of genes in different physiological states of an organism, tissue or cell (Shalon et al., 1996; Schena et al., 1996). Construction of microarrays is most efficient when information is utilized from annotated genomes or expressed sequence tags (ESTs), and has led to new insights into animal development, cancer, infectious diseases and aging (Yoshida et al., 2002; Whitney et al., 1999; Alizadeh et al., 2000). A major limitation of the technique is the analysis of sequences represented on the array. This disadvantage is particularly problematic when analyzing highly specialized tissues such as the retina due to the repertoire of uniquely or preferentially expressed genes contributing to its structure and function.