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Fig. 5 | Genome Medicine

Fig. 5

From: Biallelic variants in COPB1 cause a novel, severe intellectual disability syndrome with cataracts and variable microcephaly

Fig. 5

F0 free-feeding wild-type and transgenic [Xtr.Tg (tubb2b:GFP) Amaya, RRID: EXRC_3001] Xenopus tropicalis crispants phenocopy key clinical hallmarks. Images show tadpole head structural morphology under normal conditions (ac) and across the range of phenotypes observed: mild microcephaly (df), microcephaly with cataract(s) (gi) and microcephaly with absent or missing eye structure(s) (jl). White arrows on GFP fluorescence images show normal forebrain structures in un-injected control animals (b) and altered forebrain structures in mutants, with an increasing severity of microcephaly (e, h, k). Red arrows demonstrate the same forebrain structural trends in higher resolution MicroCT imaging (1% phosphotungstic acid contrast stain: c, f, i, l). Cataract formation is indicated in bright-field and MicroCT images by yellow arrows (g, i) and can be seen as a loss of GFP expression in fluorescence imaging (h), whilst green arrows highlight absent or missing structures of the eye (j, l). Re-occurring eye abnormalities were documented in 30 un-injected and 30 crispant tadpoles (exon 8, sgRNA3) to show the prevalence of cataract formation (mean, 14 tadpoles) and missing eye structures (mean, 5 tadpoles (m)). Further, 8 transgenic X. tropicalis crispant tadpole brains were imaged and measured (mm) 3 days post-fertilisation (control mean 1 mm, SD 0.02; Crispant mean 0.845 mm, SD 0.12 (t = 3.701; p = 0.007)) and 5 days post-fertilisation (control mean 6.37 mm, SD 0.29; Crispant mean 5.34 mm, SD 0.20 (t = 8.317; p = 0.000)) revealing sustained, significant reduction in brain length. Brain length measured as the distance from the forebrain to the hindbrain (Additional file 1: Fig. S5a) was expressed as a percentage of the mean of the control (N). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of 50 un-injected control (median survival time 4.4 days) and crispant X. tropicalis tadpoles, injected at the one-cell stage with either sgRNA1 (exon 3 (Additional file 1: Fig. S4, median survival time 2 days) or sgRNA3 (exon 8, median survival time 3 days) show a significant difference in survival by log-rank comparison p = 0.000 (o)

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