Fig. 1

Analysis of the mouse RPE transcriptome. (A) Venn diagram showing comparison of RPE DEGs with TPM greater than 45 (total = 2671) and retina DEG with 2-fold greater transcript abundance in retina than the RPE padj ≤ 0.05 (total = 4454), and an overlap of 225 genes. (B) Venn diagram showing comparison of the 2446 gene mouse RPE transcriptome identified in the present study and the 627 RPE signature genes identified in three previous publications [33, 35, 36], and an intersection of 277 genes. (C) Venn diagram showing comparison of the RPE transcriptome identified in the present study and the lists identified in the works of Bennis, Lehmann and Strunnikova [33, 35, 36], with 14 genes common to the mouse RPE transcriptome and all three RPE signature gene lists. (D) Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis of 2446 gene naïve RPE transcriptome. (E) Gene ontology (GO) analysis to identify Biological Processes in the naïve RPE transcriptome. (F) Relative mRNA expression of Gsto1 mRNA in naïve RPE, retina and choroid using qRT-PCR, normalized to 18 S ribosomal RNA (Rn18s). Bar graphs represent mean ± SEM. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA with repeated measures followed by Tukey’s post hoc test. *p < 0.05; ****p < 0.0001. (G) Immunofluorescence analysis of retinal sections from C57BL6/J mice and human showing cell nuclei (blue), GSTO1 (green), the RPE cell marker RPE65 (red). The right quadrants of each composite image represent the merged overlay of the green, red, and blue channels. Images were acquired using the Leica STELLARIS 8 FALCON Confocal Microscope, 40x objective. Scale bar = 50 μm