<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>The pineal gland is the circadian oscillator in the chicken, regulating diverse
functions ranging from egg laying to feeding. Here, we describe the isolation and
characterization of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) isolated from a chicken pineal
gland cDNA library. A total of 192 unique sequences were analysed and submitted
to GenBank; 6% of the ESTs matched neither GenBank cDNA sequences nor the
newly assembled chicken genomic DNA sequence, three ESTs aligned with sequences
designated to be on the Z_random, while one matched a W chromosome sequence and
could be useful in cataloguing functionally important genes on this sex chromosome.
Additionally, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified and validated
in 10 ESTs that showed 98% or higher sequence similarity to known chicken genes.
Here, we have described resources that may be useful in comparative and functional
genomic analysis of genes expressed in an important organ, the pineal gland, in a
model and agriculturally important organism.</p>
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Comp Funct Genomics. 2005 Jul-Aug; 6(5-6):301-306