Transcriptional profiling of the chick retina with lens-induced myopia

Gene expression of the chick retina was examined during the early development of lens-induced myopia using whole transcriptome sequencing. Monocular treatment of the right eyes with -10 diopter lenses was performed on newly born chicks for one day or two days, while the contralateral eyes without lenses served as controls. Myopia development was confirmed by demonstrating significant elongation of the optical axis in lens-treated eyes compared with untreated control eyes. RNA was extracted and RNA-seq was performed using Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. Data analysis was carried out on Partek Flow platform. Using screening criteria of > =1.30-fold change and a false discovery rate <0.01, 11 and 35 differentially expressed genes were identified at 24 hour and 48 hour, respectively. Using another cohort for validation, Quantitative PCR confirmed significant changes in the expression of VIP and UTS2B mRNA after only 24-hour LIM treatment and numerical changes in the expression for PCGF5 and FOXG1, which were consistent with transcriptome sequencing but did not reach statistical significance. These data suggest that concerted changes of retinal gene expression may be instrumental for initiation of axial elongation and myopia development.