PUBLICATION
Poor Splice-Site Recognition in a Humanized Zebrafish Knockin Model for the Recurrent Deep-Intronic c.7595-2144A>G Mutation in USH2A
- Authors
- Slijkerman, R., Goloborodko, A., Broekman, S., de Vrieze, E., Hetterschijt, L., Peters, T., Gerits, M., Kremer, H., van Wijk, E.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-181004-7
- Date
- 2018
- Source
- Zebrafish 15(6): 597-609 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- de Vrieze, Erik, Goloborodko, Alexander, Hetterschijt, Lisette, Kremer, Hannie, Slijkerman, Ralph, van Wijk, Erwin
- Keywords
- CRISPR/Cas9, USH2A, minigene splice assay, retinal degeneration, splicing, usher syndrome
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Extracellular Matrix Proteins/genetics*
- Gene Expression Regulation*
- Humans
- Introns
- Larva/growth & development
- Larva/metabolism
- Mutation
- RNA Splice Sites
- RNA Splicing
- Zebrafish/genetics*
- Zebrafish/growth & development
- PubMed
- 30281416 Full text @ Zebrafish
Citation
Slijkerman, R., Goloborodko, A., Broekman, S., de Vrieze, E., Hetterschijt, L., Peters, T., Gerits, M., Kremer, H., van Wijk, E. (2018) Poor Splice-Site Recognition in a Humanized Zebrafish Knockin Model for the Recurrent Deep-Intronic c.7595-2144A>G Mutation in USH2A. Zebrafish. 15(6):597-609.
Abstract
The frequent deep-intronic c.7595-2144A>G mutation in intron 40 of USH2A generates a high-quality splice donor site, resulting in the incorporation of a pseudoexon (PE40) into the mature transcript that is predicted to prematurely terminate usherin translation. Aberrant USH2A pre-mRNA splicing could be corrected in patient-derived fibroblasts using antisense oligonucleotides. With the aim to study the effect of the c.7595-2144A>G mutation and USH2A splice redirection on retinal function, a humanized zebrafish knockin model was generated, in which 670 basepairs of ush2a intron 40 were exchanged for 557 basepairs of the corresponding human sequence using an optimized CRISPR/Cas9-based protocol. However, in the retina of adult homozygous humanized zebrafish, only 7.4% ± 3.9% of ush2a transcripts contained the human PE40 sequence and immunohistochemical analyses revealed no differences in the usherin expression and localization between the retina of humanized and wild-type zebrafish larvae. Nevertheless, we were able to partially correct aberrant ush2a splicing using a PE40-targeting antisense morpholino. Our results indicate a clear difference in splice-site recognition by the human and zebrafish splicing machinery. Therefore, we propose a protocol in which the effect of human splice-modulating mutations is studied in a zebrafish-specific cell-based splice assay before the generation of a humanized zebrafish knockin model.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping