Table 3.

Known biological function of the top 25* candidate genes identified by δ_M, δ_C and δ_MI for six criteria (transcription factor, mutations in genes that are known to cause retinal degeneration, gene products involved in regulating apoptosis, gene products that are known photoreceptor structural genes or are involved in the photoreceptor signal transduction cascade, stress-induced genes and genes involved in calcium or ion binding as the genetic mutation in the rd mouse causes calcium overload in the photoreceptors.

Function	δ M	δ MI	δ C
Transcription factors:
	Csda, Fos, Gas6	Gas6	DKK3
Disease genes:
	Pde6b, Promt, Rho	Pde6a, Pde6b, Cnga1, Prom1	Pde6b, Gnat2 Cngal
Regulator of apoptosis:
	Aldh1a1, Tnfsf12	Tnfsf12	Aldhlal, Eefla2
photoreceptor structural genes:
	Pde6b (2), Cacnb2, Rho, Prom1	Gnbl, Pde6b, Roml, Cngal, Pde6a, Cacnb2, Gnbl	Pde6b (2), Cngal Gnbl, Gnat2
stress genes:
	Usp2, Pcp4, Clu, A2m	Clu	Clu, Mtl, Mt2
Ca2+ or ion binding:
	Pcp4, Slc4a7, Calb2, Vsnll, B2m	Vsnll, Sparcll	Spock2, Pcp4, Vsnll Calb2

Due to tied ranks, 26 genes are used as cut off for δ_M, 25 for δ_MI, and 27 for δ_C.