Abstract
Gap junctions in the vertebrate retina are among those most widely investigated in the central nervous system. Many methods have been applied to measure receptive field sizes of retinal neurons in order to estimate the activity and strength of interneuronal coupling or to describe the morphology of the underlying gap junctions. In this chapter, the results gotten by application of the freeze-fracture method to problems of gap junctional modulation in the retina will be summarized. The advantage of this method is the two-dimensional visualization of planar lipidic monolayers of membranes showing inserted particles or—as in gap junctions—connexons. In conventional ultrathin section electron microscopy, gap junctions are linear domains with variable lengths; their ultrastructural peculiarities such as size, shape or the arrangement of connexons cannot be recognized. However, using standard freeze-fracture techniques the linkage of the gap junctional domain with underlying cytoskeletal elements cannot be observed. Surprisingly, the observation of cytoplasmic surfaces in the area of gap junctions as described, for example, in liver,1 cardiac2 and lens gap junctions3 was not performed in gap junctions of the retina.
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Wolburg, H., Kurz-Isler, G. (1996). Modulation of Connexon Density in Gap Junctions of Fish Horizontal Cells. In: Gap Junctions in the Nervous System. Neuroscience Intelligence Unit. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-21935-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-21935-5_7
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