Human cochlear expressed sequence tags provide insight into cochlear gene expression and identify candidate genes for deafness.

To identify candidate genes for human hearing disorders and to understand better human hearing at the molecular level, we constructed a human cochlear cDNA library. An aliquot of the unsubtracted cochlear library was contributed to the IMAGE Consortium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the generation of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) by the Merck/WashU EST project. Over 4000 ESTs were developed from the cochlear cDNA library and deposited in the GenBank EST database. Sequence clustering shows that the majority of clones are in low copy numbers, demonstrating the high complexity of the library. The sequences of 1388 cochlear ESTs (33%) match 517 known human genes. Among these are genes previously shown to cause both syndromic and non-syndromic hearing loss. A number of the cochlear ESTs show high homology to non-human genes, suggesting new gene family members or human homologs of animal genes. We also report the chromosomal map positions of 437 cochlear ESTs. These provide positional candidate genes for 18 different non-syndromic hearing disorders. A Human Cochlear EST Database web site (http://www.bwh.partners. org/pathology ) has been created to provide access to the cochlear clone data for gene discovery investigations.