Mta 1

We used a mouse transcriptome assay (MTA 1.0; Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA, USA) for digital lncRNA profiling using 500 ng total RNA extracted from each of the aforementioned murine ocular tissues. This microarray provides a whole-transcriptome expression data set, which contains approximately 600 million probes targeted against more than 23,000 protein-coding genes and more than 55,000 noncoding genes. RNA amplification, labeling, and array hybridization were performed according to the manufacturer's instructions. The hybridization signaling was detected using a commercial scanner (Affymetrix Gene-Chip Scanner 3000; Affymetrix), and probe cell intensity data were summarized with the default settings of commercial software (Command Console Software; Affymetrix). After performing a quality assessment procedure, raw microarray data were then normalized by the expression console. Only probes perfectly matched to one gene were retained, while probes targeting several transcripts were discarded. To filter for expressed genes, a threshold cutoff-point of 5.0 was selected, and values for each gene in all biologic samples below this cutoff-point were considered to be indicative of relevant protein-coding or ncRNA expression. Accordingly, only those gene expressions satisfying this criterion were taken as candidates for the following bioinformatics analysis.