Heat-shock-induced tyrosinase gene ablation with CRISPR in zebrafish

Tyrosinase (TYR) converts l-tyrosine into 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-DOPA) and l-DOPA into l-dopaquinone, which can produce melanin pigment. The abrogation of the functional activity of TYR can result in albino skin and eye diseases because of a deficiency in melanin pigment production. In this study, we developed and characterized an inducible knockout TYR platform comprising the heat-inducible heat-shock-promoter-70-driving CRISPR/Cas9 system and a zU6-promoter-driving tyr single guide RNA (sgRNA) system to investigate the temporal expression of TYR genes. To overcome the difficulty of identifying zebrafish germline integrations and facilitate the observation of Cas9 expression, heart-specific cmlc2:enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP; used to confirm tyr sgRNA expression) and two selectable markers (P2A-mCherry and internal ribosomal entry site-EGFP) were applied in our system. Heat shock treatment administered to Cas9 transgenic embryos induced mCherry or EGFP fluorescence expression throughout the embryos' bodies, and Cas9 protein was detected 1 h after heat shock treatment. Mutations were created by direct injection and line crossing, which led to mosaic and complete depigmentation phenotypes in approximately 50% and 100% of the embryos, respectively. Using our system, conditional TYR knockout in zebrafish was achieved efficiently and simply.