An essential role for actinotrichia in zebrafish fin patterning and courtship behavior (opens in new tab)

ABSTRACTA key difference between tetrapod limb buds and teleost fin buds is the presence of rigid actinotrichia fibers that guide the migrating cells contributing to ray formation. Major structural components of actinotrichia are encoded by fish-specific actinodin (And) genes, which were lost in tetrapods. To investigate the consequences of this loss during the fin-to-limb transition, we generated deletions in zebrafish and1 and and2 using CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis. Double mutants (and1−/−and2−...