Fig. 3

Vision startle response in zebrafish.

(A) Vision function was assayed in 5-day old embryos by testing embryos sensitivity to short blocks in light at 30 second intervals for 5 trials (adapted from Easter and Nicola 1996). Selected images from a time-lapse collection before and immediately after a one second block in light. The typical response, a distinct C-bend, is scored as a positive response as shown in time point 139 ms. ms, milliseconds. (B) Quantification of the vision startle response for each treatment. Cone-rod homeobox (crx) gene knockdown was used as a control for vision impairment. bbs3 morphants lacking either both transcripts or only the long transcript showed a statistically significant reduction in the number of responses, indicating visual impairment. Rescue experiments using wild-type human BBS3L or BBS3 RNA co-injected with the bbs3 morpholinos demonstrated that hBBS3L RNA is sufficient to rescue the vision defect associated with knockdown, while hBBS3 is not sufficient to rescue the vision defect. The sample size (n) is noted on the x-axis. **ANOVA with Tukey, p<0.01.