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Identification of calretinin-expressing retinal ganglion cells projecting to the mouse superior colliculus

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Abstract

In mice, retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), which consist of around 30 subtypes, exclusively transmit retinal information to the relevant brain systems through parallel visual pathways. The superior colliculus (SC) receives the vast majority of this information from several RGC subtypes. The objective of the current study is to identify the types of calretinin (CR)-expressing RGCs that project to the SC in mice. To label RGCs, we performed CR immunoreactivity in the mouse retina after injections of fluorescent dye, dextran into mouse SC. Subsequently, the neurons double-labeled for dextran and CR were iontophoretically injected with the lipophilic dye, DiI, to characterize the detailed morphological properties of these cells. The analysis of various morphological parameters, including dendritic arborization, dendritic field size and stratification, indicated that, of the ten different types of CR-expressing RGCs in the retina, the double-labeled cells consisted of at least eight types of RGCs that projected to the SC. These cells tended to have small-medium field sizes. However, except for dendritic field size, the cells did not exhibit consistent characteristics for the other morphometric parameters examined. The combination of a tracer and single-cell injections after immunohistochemistry for a particular molecule provided valuable data that confirmed the presence of distinct subtypes of RGCs within multiple-labeled RGCs that projected to specific brain regions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Cactus Communications for proofreading the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2016R1D1A1A09918427).

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Author notes

  1. Eun-Shil Lee and Jea-Young Lee contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, School of Life Sciences, BK 21 Plus KNU Creative BioResearch Group, College of Natural Sciences, and Brain Science and Engineering Institute, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, 41566, South Korea

    Eun-Shil Lee, Gil Hyun Kim & Chang-Jin Jeon

  2. Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair, USF Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33612, USA

    Jea-Young Lee

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  1. Eun-Shil Lee
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Correspondence to Chang-Jin Jeon.

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All applicable international, national and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of our institution and were approved by the animal rights committee at Kyungpook National University, Deagu, South Korea (permission NO. 2015-0104). This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Lee, ES., Lee, JY., Kim, G.H. et al. Identification of calretinin-expressing retinal ganglion cells projecting to the mouse superior colliculus. Cell Tissue Res 376, 153–163 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00441-018-2964-1

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