Gene expression profiling of zebrafish embryonic retina.

A methodology for microdissecting intact retinas from zebrafish embryos at early developmental stages for expression profiling was developed in this study. Total RNA was extracted consistently and reproducibly from the dissected retinas using a customized extraction protocol. The results from microarray experiments indicated that the purified RNA samples faithfully represented the biological differences among different types of samples. Genes that were differentially expressed in a particular neuronal layer or region of the retina were detectable by microarray experiments. In conclusion, this methodology makes it possible to obtain retinal-specific total RNA for genomics research on retinal development in zebrafish.