Transcriptional profiles of cone cells, rod cells, and pineal photoreceptor cells in zebrafish

For isolation of rod, cone, and pineal photoreceptor cells, we used the transgenic zebrafish lines, Tg(rho:egfp)ja2Tg, Tg(gnat2:egfp)ja23Tg, and Tg(exorh:EGFP)ja1Tg, which express EGFP in rods, all cone subtypes, and pineal rod cells, respectively. Retinas were dissected from dark-adapted adult fish under dim red light. The isolated retinas were digested with trypsin in Ca2+-free Ringer’s solution. The reaction was terminated by adding soybean trypsin inhibitor and fetal bovine serum. The dissociated EGFP-positive cells were isolated with a fluorescence activating cell sorter (FACSAria, BD Biosciences) by the following three parameters: forward scatter, side scatter and green fluorescence. Goal was to determine differentially expressed genes among three types of photoreceptor cells. Three-condition experiment: cone, rod, and pineal cells. Two biological replicates for each purified cells