Eye Research Institute Scientists Analyze the Guinea Pig Genome

All the genetic information of an organism in contained in its genome. Although the human genome has been sequenced and the genes have been identified, this is not true for many other species. Yet, animal models are absolutely crucial for biomedical research. In December 2008, CBR member Kenneth Mitton, of the Eye Research Institute, and his coworkers published Expressed Sequence Tag Analysis of Guinea Pig (Cavia Porcellus) Eye Tissues for NEIBank (Molecular Vision, Volume 14, Pages 2413-2427). They conclude that

"The guinea pig is an important model organism in several areas of modern eye research. What was lacking is a characterization of the transcriptional repertoire of guinea pig eye tissues and a definition of the full sequences of key proteins from lens, retina and other parts of the eye. Here we describe three new cDNA (EST) libraries for tissues of the guinea pig eye. These provide sequence verified cDNA clones for future studies and complete sequence information for many eye proteins. The guinea pig has its own pattern of similarities and differences with the human eye and provides an important alternative to other research models."

The first author of the paper is Francis Simpanya, a Research Associate in the Eye Research Institute. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.