Deletion of IFT20 exclusively in the RPE ablates primary cilia and leads to retinal degeneration

by Viola Kretschmer, Sandra Schneider, Peter Andreas Matthiessen, Dominik Reichert, Nathan Hotaling, Gunnar Glas ßer, Ingo Lieberwirth, Kapil Bharti, Rossella De Cegli, Ivan Conte, Emeline F. Nandrot, Helen Louise May-Simera

Vision impairment places a serious burden on the aging society, affecting the lives of millions of people. Many retinal diseases are of genetic origin, of which over 50% are due to mutations in cilia-associated genes. Most research on retinal degeneration has focused on the ciliated photoreceptor cells of the retina. However, the contribution of primary cilia in other ocular cell types has largely been ignored. The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is a monolayer epithelium at the back of the eye intricately associated with photoreceptors and essential for visual function. It is already known that primary cilia in the RPE are critical for its development and maturation; however, it remains unclear whether this affects RPE function and retinal tissue homeostasis. We generated a conditional knockout mouse model, in which IFT20 is exclusively deleted in the RPE, ablating primary cilia. This leads to defective RPE function, followed by photoreceptor degeneration and, ultimately, vision impairment. Transcriptomic analysis offers insights into mechanisms underlying pathogenic changes, which include transcripts related to epithelial homeostasis, the visual cycle, and phagocytosis. Due to the loss of cilia exclusively in the RPE, this mouse model enables us to t...

Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - December 4, 2023 Category: Biology Authors: Viola Kretschmer Source Type: research