Fig. 6. Morpholino-mediated knockdown of edn3b function in wild-type and alb embryos results in a strong reduction of iridophores.

(A–A″) Morpholinos designed to interfere with splicing or translation of edn3b were injected into alb embryos, RNA in situ hybridization for pnp4a at 48 hpf shows a reduction of iridophore numbers in the dorsal stripes (marked with asterisks in panels A and A′). At 5 dpf morpholino injected larvae show strong reductions in iridophore numbers. Injection of a 5-bp-mismatch control morpholino had no effect (B). RT-PCR results to detect edn3b spliced message (C). Whereas the mismatch control morpholino showed no effect on the level of edn3b transcript, the PCR did not result in amplification of edn3b message after injection of the splice-interfering morpholino.