0000000000704203
AUTHOR
Nathan Hotaling
Primary Cilium Mediated Retinal Pigment Epithelium Maturation is Retarded in Ciliopathy Patient Cells
Primary cilia are sensory organelles that protrude from the cell membrane. Cilia defects cause ciliopathy disorders with retinal degeneration as a prominent phenotype. Here, we demonstrate that the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), essential for photoreceptor development and function, requires a functional primary cilium for complete maturation, and RPE maturation defects in ciliopathies precede photoreceptor development. Pharmacologically enhanced ciliogenesis in wildtype induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)-RPE leads to fully-mature and functional cells. Whereas, ciliopathy patient-derived iPSCs-RPE and wildtype iPSC-RPE with a knockdown of ciliary-trafficking protein remain immature, w…
Primary Cilium-Mediated Retinal Pigment Epithelium Maturation Is Disrupted in Ciliopathy Patient Cells
SUMMARY Primary cilia are sensory organelles that protrude from the cell membrane. Defects in the primary cilium cause ciliopathy disorders, with retinal degeneration as a prominent phenotype. Here, we demonstrate that the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), essential for photoreceptor development and function, requires a functional primary cilium for complete maturation and that RPE maturation defects in ciliopathies precede photoreceptor degeneration. Pharmacologically enhanced ciliogenesis in wild-type induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-RPE leads to fully mature and functional cells. In contrast, ciliopathy patient-derived iPSC-RPE and iPSC-RPE with a knockdown of ciliary-trafficking pr…
Generation of an inducible RPE-specific Cre transgenic-mouse line.
The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is an epithelial monolayer in the back of the vertebrate eye. RPE dysfunction is associated with retinal degeneration and blindness. In order to fully understand how dysregulation affects visual function, RPE-specific gene knockouts are indispensable. Since the currently available RPE-specific Cre recombinases show lack of specificity or poor recombination, we sought to generate an alternative. We generated a tamoxifen-inducible RPE-specific Cre transgenic mouse line under transcriptional control of an RPE-specific Tyrosinase enhancer. We characterized the Cre-mediated recombinant expression by crossing our RPE-Tyrosinase-CreErT2 mouse line with the tdTo…