Fig. 2. Apparent compensation for Hspb7 by Hspb5b.
(A) qPCR quantification of transcript levels of cardiac-expressed hspb family members in 5 dpf zebrafish embryonic heart tissue demonstrates that hspb5b expression is upregulated in hspb7WC3/WC3 mutant hearts. Changes in gene expression are significant according to an unpaired t-test, corrected for multiple comparisons with the Holm-Sidak method. (B) Injection of cardiac-targeted hspb5b CRISPR sgRNA leads to increased cardiac and body abnormalities at 48 hpf in hspb7WC3/WC3 embryos compared to wildtype controls. Here n for wildtype = 64 larvae, and for hspb7 mutants is 65 larvae. The defects in mutant compared to wildtype is statistically significant according to Fisher’s exact test (p=0.029).