Gata3 directly regulates cell cycle exit-coupled lens fiber cell differentiation in mouse embryonic lens

Gata3 is a DNA-binding transcription factor involved in cellular differentiation in a variety of tissues. To investigate the role of Gata3 in lens development we conducted lens-specific conditional loss-of-function model of Gata3 and confirmed abnormal regulation of cell cycle exit-coupled lens differentiation and retention of nuclei in the mutated lens fibers. We analyzed transcriptomes between control and mutated lenses by RNA-seq and revealed dysregulation of genes encoding critical components of the lens differentiation cascade, including a subset of crystallin genes, down-regulation of Dnase2b and reduced expression of Cdkn1b/p27 and Cdkn1c/p57. Overall design: Lens mRNA profiles of E14.5 wild-type (WT) and Gata3 lens-specific knockout (CKO) mice were analyzed by RNA-seq. Each sample represents the pool of 10 lenses from 5 embryos and total number of 3 biological replicates was used for transcriptome sequencing using Illumina HiSeq400 system.