L. Li et Je. Dowling, A DOMINANT FORM OF INHERITED RETINAL DEGENERATION CAUSED BY A NON-PHOTORECEPTOR CELL-SPECIFIC MUTATION, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America, 94(21), 1997, pp. 11645-11650
We have isolated a dominant mutation, night blindness a (nba), that ca
uses a slow retinal degeneration in zebrafish, Heterozygous nba fish h
ave normal vision through 2-3 months of age but subsequently become ni
ght blind, By 9.5 months of age, visual sensitivity of affected fish m
ay be decreased more than two log units, or 100-fold, as measured beha
viorally, Electroretinographic (ERG) thresholds of mutant fish are als
o raised significantly, and the ERG b-wave shows a delayed implicit ti
me, These defects are due primarily to a late-onset photoreceptor cell
degeneration involving initially the rods but eventually the cones as
well, Homozygous nba fish display an early-onset neuronal degeneratio
n throughout the retina and elsewhere in the central nervous system, A
s a result, animals develop with small eyes and die by 4-5 days postfe
rtilization (pf), These latter data indicate that the mutation affecti
ng nba fish is not in a photoreceptor cell-specific gene.