Developmental Transcriptome Dynamics of the Murine Retina

This study provides a comprehensive transcript analysis of the developing mouse retina with a focus on normalization, differentially expression, cell-type specific gene expression, transcription factor co-expression, alternative splicing, and novel transcript discovery. RNA-seq profiling was performed on four embryonic and eight postnatal time points during mouse retinal development and maturation. Alignment, transcript quantitation, normalization and differential expression, alternative splice usage, and novel transcript discovery was performed. Quantitative analysis revealed that 25,901 total transcripts encoding for 13,714 genes were expressed in the mouse retina between embryonic day 11 and postnatal day 28. Of these expressed transcripts, 12,075 were significantly differentially expressed (10,069 genes) at some point during development corresponding to ~73% of the expressed genes. RNA-seq was performed in duplicate on developing and mature mouse retina from 12 stages comprising four embryonic time points (E11, E12, E14, and E16) and eight postnatal time points (P0, P2, P4, P6, P10, P14, P21, and P28).