Open Access Research article Conservation of core gene expression in vertebrate tissues Esther T Chan*¶, Gerald T Quon†¶, Gordon Chua‡¶¥, Tomas Babak¶#, Miles Trochesset†‡, Ralph A Zirngibl*, Jane Aubin*, Michael JH Ratcliffe§, Andrew Wilde*, Michael Brudno†‡¶, Quaid D Morris*†‡¶ and Timothy R Hughes*‡¶ Addresses: *Department of Molecular Genetics, †Department of Computer Science, ‡Banting and Best Department of Medical Research, §Department of Immunology and Sunnybrook Research Institute, and ¶Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, University of Toronto, 160 College Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E1, Canada. ¥Current address: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4 Canada. #Current address: Rosetta Inpharmatics, 401 Terry Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109, USA. Correspondence: Quaid D Morris. Email:
[email protected]. Timothy R Hughes. Email:
[email protected] Published: 16 April 2009 Received: 23 January 2009 Revised: 12 March 2009 Journal of Biology 2009, 8:33 (doi:10.1186/jbiol130) Accepted: 18 March 2009 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http://jbiol.com/content/8/3/33 © 2009 Chan et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background Vertebrates share the same general body plan and organs, possess related sets of genes, and rely on similar physiological mechanisms, yet show great diversity in morphology, habitat and behavior.