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Abstract
As the sister group to bilaterians, cnidarians stand in a unique phylogenetic position that provides insight into evolutionary aspects of animal development, physiology, and behavior. While cnidarians are classified into two types, sessile polyps and free-swimming medusae, most studies at the cellular and molecular levels have been conducted on representative polyp-type cnidarians and have focused on establishing techniques of genetic manipulation. Recently, gene knockdown by delivery of short hairpin RNAs into eggs via electroporation has been introduced in two polyp-type cnidarians,
Nematostella vectensis
and
Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus
, enabling systematic loss-of-function experiments. By contrast, current methods of genetic manipulation for most medusa-type cnidarians, or jellyfish, are quite limited, except for
Clytia hemisphaerica
, and reliable techniques are required to interrogate function of specific genes in different jellyfish species. Here, we present a method to knock down target genes by delivering small interfering RNA (siRNA) into fertilized eggs via electroporation, using the hydrozoan jellyfish,
Clytia hemisphaerica
and
Cladonema paciificum
. We show that siRNAs targeting endogenous
GFP1
and
Wnt3
in
Clytia
efficiently knock down gene expression and result in known planula phenotypes: loss of green fluorescence and defects in axial patterning, respectively. We also successfully knock down endogenous
Wnt3
in
Cladonema
by siRNA electroporation, which circumvents the technical difficulty of microinjecting small eggs.
Wnt3
knockdown in
Cladonema
causes gene expression changes in axial markers, suggesting a conserved Wnt/β-catenin-mediated pathway that controls axial polarity during embryogenesis. Our gene-targeting siRNA electroporation method is applicable to other animals, including and beyond jellyfish species, and will facilitate the investigation and understanding of myriad aspects of animal development.