Retinal waves in mice lacking the beta2 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.

Chao Sun, David K Warland, Jose M Ballesteros, Deborah van der List, Leo M Chalupa

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2008 Sep 09

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The structural and functional properties of the visual system are disrupted in mutant animals lacking the beta2 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. In particular, eye-specific retinogeniculate projections do not develop normally in these mutants. It is widely thought that the developing retinas of beta2(-/-) mutants do not manifest correlated activity, leading to the notion that retinal waves play an instructional role in the formation of eye-specific retinogeniculate projections. By multielectrode array recordings, we show here that the beta2(-/-) mutants have robust retinal waves during the formation of eye-specific projections. Unlike in WT animals, however, the mutant retinal waves are propagated by gap junctions rather than cholinergic circuitry. These results indicate that lack of retinal waves cannot account for the abnormalities that have been documented in the retinogeniculate pathway of the beta2(-/-) mutants and suggest that other factors must contribute to the deficits in the visual system that have been noted in these animals.

Citation

Chao Sun, David K Warland, Jose M Ballesteros, Deborah van der List, Leo M Chalupa. Retinal waves in mice lacking the beta2 subunit of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2008 Sep 09;105(36):13638-43