Description
Identification of genes involved in ocular birth defects remains a challenge. To facilitate the identification of genes associated with cataract, we developed iSyTE (integrated Systems Tool for Eye gene discovery; http://bioinformatics.udel.edu/Research/iSyTE). iSyTE contains microarray gene expression profiles of the mouse embryonic lens as it transitions from the stage of placode invagination to that of vesicle formation. We identified differentially regulated genes by comparing lens microarray profiles to those representing whole embryonic body (WB) without ocular tissue. These were then utilized to generate a ranked list of lens-genes enrichment, which can be viewed as iSyTE tracks in the UCSC Genome browser to aid identification of genes with lens function.