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Knockout of lws1 in zebrafish (Danio rerio) reveals its role in regulating feeding and vision-guided behavior

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Abstract

Long-wave sensitive (LWS) is a G protein-coupled receptor expressed in the retina, and zebrafish is a better model organism for studying vision, but the role of LWS1 in vision-guided behavior of larvae fish has rarely been reported. In this study, we found that zebrafish lws1 and lws2 are tandemly replicated genes, both with six exons, with lws1 being more evolutionarily conserved. The presence of Y277F in the amino acid sequence of lws2 may have contributed to the shift of λmax to green light. We established a lws1 knockout zebrafish model using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Lws1−/− larvae showed significantly higher levels of feeding and appetite gene (agrp) expression than WT, and significantly lower levels of anorexia gene (pomc, cart) expression. In addition, green light gene compensation was observed in lws1−/− larvae with significantly increased expression levels of rh2-1. The light-dark movement test showed that lws1−/− larvae were more active under light-dark transitions or vibrational stimuli, and the expression of phototransduction-related genes was significantly up-regulated. This study reveals the important role of lws1 gene in the regulation of vision-guided behavior in larvae.

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Funding

This work was financially supported the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31972809) and the Key Research & Development Program of Hubei Province (2022BBA0051).

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  1. Di-Mei Xu and Fa-Rui Chai contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Fisheries, Chinese Perch Research Center, Huazhong Agricultural University, No.1, Shizishan Street, Hongshan District, Wuhan, 430070, Hubei Province, China

    Di-Mei Xu, Fa-Rui Chai, Xu-Fang Liang & Ke Lu

  2. Engineering Research Center of Green Development for Conventional Aquatic Biological Industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Ministry of Education, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Di-Mei Xu, Fa-Rui Chai, Xu-Fang Liang & Ke Lu

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  1. Di-Mei Xu
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  2. Fa-Rui Chai
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Di-Mei Xu supplement and analyzed experimental data, wrote the original draft. Fa-Rui Chai designed and performed the experiment, analyzed experimental data. Ke Lu participated in some of the experiments. Xu-Fang Liang designed and supervised the experiment and wrote and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xu-Fang Liang.

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Xu, DM., Chai, FR., Liang, XF. et al. Knockout of lws1 in zebrafish (Danio rerio) reveals its role in regulating feeding and vision-guided behavior. Funct Integr Genomics 24, 62 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10142-024-01333-y

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