Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
FPO
FIGURE 3.5.
Cx26
immunofluoresence staining of the cochlear duct. Rabbit poly-
clonal anti-
Cx26
staining showing expression in the stria vascularis, basement
membrane, limbus and spiral prominence (magnification, 16¥). (Reprinted with per-
mission from Nature (387:80-83). Copyright 1997 Macmillan Magazines Limited.)
9.5 Transgenic/Knockout Models
The ability to introduce targeted mutations in a gene by homologous
recombination in the mouse allows the possibility of confirming the phe-
notypic consequences of mutations in a gene for inherited hearing impair-
ment or deafness (Friedman and Ryan 1992; Friedman 1996; Faerman and
Shani 1997). Examples are the analysis of the role of the
POU
-domain
factor
Brn-3c
gene in auditory and vestibular hair cell development (Xiang
et al. 1997) and the knockout mouse model for Alport syndrome (Cosgrove
et al. 1988).
9.6 New Approaches Resulting from the Human
Genome Project
The availability of human DNA sequence information has allowed the
development of a new cloning strategy for identifying expressed sequ-
ences. If a gene is mapped to a relatively small interval, genomic clones
from the contig covering that region can be subcloned and sequenced. The
resulting sequence information can be compared with that in a number
of sequence databases, such as the GenBank BLAST Search database
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/) to identify sequences with homol-
