Differential Gene Expression in the Auditory System

Hearing disorders affect over 10% of the population and this ratio is dramatically increasing with age. Development of appropriate therapeutic approaches requires understanding of the auditory system, which remains largely incomplete. We have identified hearing-specific genes and pathways by mapping over 15000 cochlear expressed sequence tags (ESTs) to the human genome (NCBI Build 35) and comparing it to other EST clusters (Unigene Build 183). A number of novel potentially cochlear-specific genes discovered in this work are currently being verified by experimental studies. The software tool developed for this task is based on a fast bidirectional multiple pattern search algorithm. Patterns used for scoring and selection of loci include EST subsequences, cloning-process identifiers, and genomic and external contamination determinants. Comparison of our results with other programs and available annotations shows that the software developed provides potentially the fastest, yet reliable mapping of ESTs.