Animals

All animal studies were conducted according to protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Wenzhou Medical University on March 4, 2022 (approval No. XMSQ (Zhe) 2022-0256) and were in accordance with the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Statement for the Use of Animals in Ophthalmic and Vision Research (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2021). Srgap2^+/– (heterozygote knockout, HET) mice and littermate C57BL/6J mice were used for all experiments. Srgap2 gene deficiency mice were generated by Cyagen (Suzhou, China; license No. SCXK (Yue) 2018-0032) using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) gene-editing technology and were genotyped using the following primers provided by Cyagen: 5′-ATT TCT CAT TTG GGT TCC TGG CC-3′, 5′-GCA CTC ACC TCA ACG TCA AAT TAC CT-3′ and 5′-GTG GTC AGA CAG ACA GCT CTA AAT ATG C-3′. Mice were housed at 21°C and 55% humidity under a 12-hour light/dark cycle (20 lx), provided food and water ad libitum and were under constant supervision from trained staff, with up to six animals in each cage. Sex- and age-matched C57BL/6J mice were used as controls in this experiment. In this study, 164 wild-type (WT) mice and 113 Srgap2^+/– mice aged 2–4 months (20–26 g) with sexes evenly divided were used. For all experiments, experimenters and observers were blinded to group assignment and outcome assessment. The animals used in each experiment were listed in Additional Figure 1A.