CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutation reveals Pax6 is essential for development of the compound eye in Decapoda Exopalaemon carinicauda.

The compound eye in crustaceans is a main eye type in the animal kingdom, knowledge about the mechanism to determine the development of compound eye is very limited. Paired box protein 6 (Pax6) is generally regarded as a master regulator for eye development. In the present study, a genome-based analysis of the Pax6 gene in the ridge tail white prawn Exopalaemon carinicauda was performed and two members of Pax6 homologs, named Ec-Eyeless (EcEy) and Ec-Twin of eyeless (EcToy) were identified. To understand the function of these two homologs of Pax6 gene in the prawn, the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technique was applied to generate EcEy and EcToy knock-out (KO) prawns and their phenotypes were analyzed. The surviving EcEy-KO embryos and larvae exhibited severe abnormal eye morphology, suggesting that EcEy is necessary for the compound eye development in prawn, while no mutant phenotype was found in EcToy-KO individuals. These findings highlighted the conservative role of Pax6 gene in the compound eye formation, and the functional differentiation between EcEy and EcToy gene may reveal a novel regulating mechanism of Pax6 on the compound eye development in the decapods. These data will provide important information for understanding the regulation mechanism for crustacean compound eye development. Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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Yi Gao, Xiaoxi Zhang, Xiaojun Zhang, Jianbo Yuan, Jianhai Xiang, Fuhua Li. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutation reveals Pax6 is essential for development of the compound eye in Decapoda Exopalaemon carinicauda. Developmental biology. 2020 Sep 15;465(2):157-167

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PMID: 32702356

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