We found eight genes that showed this pattern of expression: Snai2, Zeb1, Irs1, Nr3c1, Foxo1, Alk, Eln and Rad51. Three of these are known deafness genes: Snai2, which is involved in melanocyte development (Sanchez-Martin et al., 2002), Zeb1, which is required for the specification of mesenchymal identity and repression of epithelial identity (Hertzano et al., 2011), and Irs1 (DeMambro et al., 2010). Here, RAD51 is linked to deafness.