Whole-body gene expression by data mining

To date, a comprehensive survey of the expression of lysyl oxidase (LOX), lysyl oxidase-like 1 (LOXL1), and lysyl oxidase-like 2 (LOXL2) has yet to be performed. The use of in vitro strategies to accomplish this task would prove daunting as it is both time-consuming and costly. We present a new in silico data mining strategy that directly addresses these limitations. Sequences corresponding to the 3' untranslated regions of LOX, LOXL1, and LOXL2 were individually queried against the human expressed sequence tag database (dbEST). In this manner, the entire tissue repertoire available in the dbEST was surveyed. This provided an estimate of the levels of mRNA transcripts in a variety of adult and fetal tissues. We have also employed this strategy to determine the pattern of expression and levels of a newly discovered gene, CGI-15. The veracity of this technique has been independently assessed by semiquantitative PCR analysis. The application of this technology is bounded only by the ever-growing information available in the GenBank, UniGene, and human EST databases. The utility of our data mining strategy to establish relative transcript levels in numerous tissues is presented.