Figure 3

Flow diagram of criteria used for the selection of donor eyes. Donor eyes were required to meet all selection criteria before inclusion in the study. X indicates exclusion from the study. Donors were all between 60 and 80 years old in order to exclude the presence of undetected monogenic disorders. The presence of any known eye disease or malignancy was used as an exclusion criterion since both can alter (RPE) gene expression levels. Post mortem times were required to be less than 30 hours to reduce the effects of RNA degradation. Ocular abnormalities on visual or histological inspection served as exclusion criteria, specifically any signs of early AMD, defined by us as the presence of more than 1 druse per 10 histological sections. Poor morphology of the retina was also an exclusion criterion.