Does Background Matter? A Comparative Characterization of Mouse Models of Autosomal Retinitis Pigmentosa rd1 and Pde6b-KO.

Many retinal degenerative diseases result in vision impairment or permanent blindness due to photoreceptor loss or dysfunction. It has been observed that Pde6b mice (rd1), which carry a spontaneous nonsense mutation in the gene, have a strong phenotypic similarity to patients suffering from autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa. In this study, we present a novel mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa generated through gene knockout using CRISPR/Cas9 technology.