obtain an initial overview of gene diversity and expression pattern in porcinethymus, 11,712 ESTs (Expressed Sequence Tags) from 100-day-old porcine thymus(FTY) were sequenced and 7,071 cleaned ESTs were used for gene expressionanalysis. Clustered by the PHRAP program, 959 contigs and 3,074 singlets wereobtained. Blast search showed that 806 contigs and 1,669 singlets (totally 5,442ESTs) had homologues in GenBank and 1,629 ESTs were novel. According to theGene Ontology classification, 36.99% ESTs were cataloged into the gene expressiongroup, indicating that although the functional gene (18.78% in defense group) ofthymus is expressed in a certain degree, the 100-day-old porcine thymus still existsin a developmental stage. Comparative analysis showed that the gene expressionpattern of the 100-day-old porcine thymus is similar to that of the human infantthymus.