TissueDistributionDBs, is a repository of tissue distribution profiles for identifying and ranking the genes in the spectrum of tissue specificity based on Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). This repository is currently available for several model organisms across animal and plant kingdoms and is fundamentally based on the UniGene database.

These databases are based on the principle that the source of ESTs attributed to a certain gene implies its expression in a specific tissue or a set of tissues. This reasoning has been used to calculate general expression profiles, as well as to identify genes that are specifically expressed in one particular tissue or organ. The use of a Tissue Synonym Library, the Brenda Tissue Ontology and a Tissue Slims- a higher-level view of the tissue terms provide a more refined and reliable tissue distribution calculations for understanding tissue-specificity.

This Resource provides information about:

• all genes that are recognizably characteristic of a particular tissue.
• all genes which are semi-tissue specific.
• all house keeping genes, the genes that are expressed in all cells and tissues in a uniform manner(non-tissue specific).
• a small number of tissues that can be said to share the gene at a certain specificity level.

The TissueDistribution databases are developed and maintained by the Husar Bioinformatics Lab ,Department of Molecular Biophysics at the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center,DKFZ,Heidelberg).