  Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in people over the
age of 60, accounting for 6.6 to 8% of all blindness in 2010, but there is
still much to be learned about the genetic origins of the eye disease. With the
modern development of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, scientists
are starting to learn more about the genetic origins of Glaucoma. This research
uses differential expression (DE) and gene ontology (GO) analyses to study the
genetic differences between mice with severe Glaucoma and multiple control
groups. Optical nerve head (ONH) and retina data samples of genome-wide RNA
expression from NCBI (NIH) are used for pairwise comparison experimentation. In
addition, principal component analysis (PCA) and dispersion visualization
methods are employed to perform quality control tests of the sequenced data.
Genes with skewed gene counts are also identified, as they may be marker genes
for a particular severity of Glaucoma. The gene ontologies found in this
experiment support existing knowledge of Glaucoma genesis, providing confidence
that the results were valid. Future researchers can thoroughly study the gene
lists generated by the DE and GO analyses to find potential activator or
protector genes for Glaucoma in mice to develop drug treatments or gene
therapies to slow or stop the progression of the disease. The overall goal is
that in the future, such treatments can be made for humans as well to improve
the quality of life for human patients with Glaucoma and reduce Glaucoma
blindness rates.
