RNA-seq expression profiling of hair-cells in zebrafish

Sensorineural hearing loss affects the majority of the elderly population. Mammalian hair cells (HC) do not regenerate and current stem cell and gene delivery protocols result only in immature hair cells like-cells. For this reason, characterization of the transcriptional cascades that lead to development and survival of inner ear HC is essential for designing molecular-based treatments for deafness. We employed a cell type-specific approach to analyze the transcriptomes of the mouse early postnatal auditory and vestibular sensory epithelia and of hair cells derived from zebrafish model. We utilized the ppv3b:GFP transgenic zebrafish, which express GFP predominantly in HC. We sorted GFP-positive and negative cells from 5 day post fertilization (dpf) larvae using flow cytometry, and profiled their transcriptomes using RNA-seq