Inner ear expression data from pooled inner ear tissue from stages 56,57,58 Xenopus laevis larval inner ears

The inner ear continues to grow and develop until the auditory and vestibular systems reach full maturity and all of the genes involved in this process have yet to be identified. Previous gene based analysis have primarily focused on the early developmental stages following induction and initial formation of the inner ear. The aim of this study is to identify new candidate genes for inner ear development. Microarrays were used to produce expression profiles from larval stages 56,57,58 of the Xenopus laevis inner ear. The data produced from this work represent an annotated resource that can be utilized by the Xenopus community to provide candidates for further functional analysis. Xenopus inner ears were isolated from larval animals for RNA extraction and hybridization to Affymetrix GeneChip microarrays.