Figure 2

Hypothetical molecular model of aqueous humor production. On the left, there is the physiological model of aqueous humor (AH) production of Civan and coworkers [2]. This model includes the different ion-channels involved in the AH production. On the right, there is hypothetical in silico molecular model of AH production. This model is based on our gene expression data of the ciliary body epithelia (CBE) and our strict selection criteria of the 10% highest and significant different expressed genes of the non-pigmented (NPE) and pigmented epithelia (PE) (all together in the Transport sub-dataset; see Methods). For the Na⁺/K⁺/2Cl^- symporter (coded by SLC12A1 and SLC12A2) we did not found a coding gene in the Transport sub-dataset (indicated with * in the model). Genes coding for ion-channels with moderate expression levels (for example SLC12A2) can be found in Table 1. The underlined genes (ATP1B1, GJA4, KCNB2, KCND2) are signature genes of the PE compared to the NPE (fold change >2.5 and p-value < 0.01; see Methods section).