RNA-seq analysis of the developing chicken retina. Gallus gallus

The chicken embryo (Gallus gallus) is a classic model system for studying developmental biology. During chick development, embryonic day 8 (E8) retina are packed with multipotent neuronal precursors on the cusp of differentiation into all retinal cell types. By E18 the retina is nearly fully mature with all major retinal cell types differentiated and expressing cell type-specific genes. Whole retina were harvested from embryonic day 8 (E8), E16, and E18 developing chicken embryos. Whole cornea were also collected from E18 embryos as a reference tissue. Duplicates were obtained for each time point and total RNA was extracted from samples using a Qiagen AllPrep Mini Kit. To characterize differential gene expression in these tissues, Illumina stranded TrueSeq RNA-Seq libraries were prepared from total RNA and 125 PE sequencing reads were obtained. These data will be used to characterize retina-specific patters of gene expression as well as global changes in gene expression between critical developmental time points in the chicken retina. Overall design: 4 samples in duplicate; 3 developmental time points of the retina E8, E16, E18) and 1 reference tissue (cornea)