Figure 8

Locomotor analysis of neu3.2 morphants and murine Neu2-rescued embryos at different stages of development. Swimming performance of embryos at 48 hpf in the touch-evoked test. A significant progressive decrease in the percentage of neu3.2 morphants when compared to embryos injected with standard morpholino (STD-MO) or rescued–injected embryos was detected (**** p < 0.0001, Student’s t-test test). The results are representative of three independent experiments with 40 embryos per group. At 72 hpf, a significant percentage of neu3.2-MO-injected embryos exhibited a decreased number of tail flip movements when compared to STD-MO or rescued Neu2 mRNA-injected embryos (*** p < 0.001 vs. STD-MO; **** p < 0.0001 vs. STD-MO—Student’s t-test). At 6 dpf for a light–dark locomotion test, movements were reported as the mean ± SD of the total distance swam by the larvae (cm), calculated during both light and dark stimuli. The results are expressed as the mean ± SD of 3 independent experiments, with 12 surviving larvae for each experiment and for each treatment (**** p < 0.0001 vs. STD-MO; n.s.: not significative—Student’s t-test).