Proteome Profiling in the Rat Harderian Gland

The Harderian gland is an orbital gland located behind the ocular bulb in most terrestrial vertebrates probably functioning for production of lipid secretion to protect the eye. We herein present a protein reference database of the rat Harderian gland that may serve as analytical tool for future proteomic work, report lipid and porphyrin handling cascades, address sequence conflicts and report structures that have not been so far described by proteomics methods. Keywords: novel protein • hypothetical proteins • lipid metabolism • porphyrin metabolism • sequence conflicts • profiling • reference database