title: Influence of bone morphogenetic protein type IA receptor conditional knockout in lens on expression of bone morphogenetic protein 4 in lens.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the influence of bone morphogenetic protein type IA receptor [BMPR-IA (ALK3)] conditional knockout in lens on expression of bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4) in lens during the development of the vertebrate eye.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cre-positive mice were mated with Cre-negative mice to generate 50% Cre-positive (conditional knockout, CKO) 4 embryos, 8 eyes and 50% Cre-negative offspring (wild type, WT) 4 embryos, 8 eyes. The embryos were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde, embedded in paraffin, and sectioned to a thickness of 4 µm. Removal of paraffin wax and dehydrating for sections, and then the procedure of in situ hybridization was processed, BMP4 MK1784-m (BOSTER) was used, and observed the expression of BMP4 in the lens in experimental group and control group. We selected SPSS11.0 software for statistical analysis, P<0.05 showed that the difference was statistically significant.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Four embryos of each genotype were examined, totally we had 8 embryos, 16 eyes. We got the uniform outcomes in all the embryos. We found ALK3 was required during lens growing, but was not essential for the formation of lens. We observed that the expression of Bmp4 in the lens was significantly reduced in all 8 ALK3 CKO lens, BMP4 expression was normal in all the 8 WT lens, P<0.01. This phenomenon became increasingly visible in accordance with embryo development. The most apparent alteration was present at stage E15.5.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ALK3 is essential for lens growth. The influence of ALK3 on the expression of BMP4 is present during the development of mice lens.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian 116023, Liaoning Province, China.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110032, Liaoning Province, China.
authors.forename: Jiang-Yue
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Ophthalmology, the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110032, Liaoning Province, China.
authors.forename: Jin-Song
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Zhang
keywords: bone morphogenetic protein 4; bone morphogenetic protein type IA receptor; lens