Image defocus and altered retinal gene expression in chicks

Because refractive development is governed largely by the retina, we analyzed the retinal transcriptome in chicks wearing a spectacle lens, a well-established means to induce refractive errors, to identify gene expression alterations and to develop novel mechanistic hypotheses about refractive development. One-week-old white Leghorn chicks wore a unilateral spectacle lens of + or –15 diopters for 6 hours or 3 days (n=6 for each condition). With total RNA from the retina/retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), Affymetrix Chicken GeneChips were used to compare gene expression levels between lens-wearing and contralateral control eyes. Normalized microarray signal intensities were evaluated by an analysis of variance approach. Selected differentially expressed genes were validated by qPCR in biologically independent samples.