Medaka eyeless is the key factor linking retinal determination and eye growth

Abstract

The complete absence of eyes in the medaka fish mutation eyeless is the result of defective optic vesicle evagination. We show that the eyeless mutation is caused by an intronic insertion in the Rx3 homeobox gene resulting in a transcriptional repression of the locus that is rescued by injection of plasmid DNA containing the wild-type locus. Functional analysis reveals that Six3- and Pax6- dependent retina determination does not require Rx3. However, gain- and loss-of-function phenotypes show that Rx3 is indispensable to initiate optic vesicle evagination and to control vesicle proliferation, by that regulating organ size. Thus, Rx3 acts at a key position coupling the determination with subsequent morphogenesis and differentiation of the developing eye.