Figure 4. Time-course of rod-specific gene expression. Total RNA was extracted from the retinas of the wild-type, Rpe65^−/−, Cspg5^−/−, and Cspg5^−/−/Rpe65^−/− mice at ages 2 weeks (w) to 12 months (m). Rhodopsin (Rho) and rod transducin alpha subunit (Gnat1) gene expression was assessed with quantitative PCR, with four animals analyzed in duplicate for each genotype. Wild-type mRNA expression was arbitrarily set to 1 at 2 weeks. For all panels, fold inductions±standard error of the mean (SEM) are shown. With two-way ANOVA, no significant changes in relative mRNA expression between wild-type and Cspg5^−/− mice, and between Rpe65^−/− and Cspg5^−/−/Rpe65^−/− mice were detected during progression of the disease.