Retina articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The precise organization of ON bipolar cells in the visual system remains poorly understood. Here, the authors discover that the mammalian ON bipolar pathway is divided into two streams that distribute the encoding of spatial and temporal information from naturalistic visual stimuli, respectively.

    • Jen-Chun Hsiang
    • , Ning Shen
    •  & Daniel Kerschensteiner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How starburst amacrine cell (SAC) dendrites transform concentrically distributed synaptic inputs into branch-specific directional outputs is not fully understood. Here the authors report that dendritic mGluR2 signaling and somatic Kv3-mediated shunting coordinately implement SAC dendritic direction selectivity.

    • Héctor Acarón Ledesma
    • , Jennifer Ding
    •  & Wei Wei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mutations in rhodopsin can cause the receptor to aggregate, however, it is unclear whether this molecular defect underlies the retinal degeneration in autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. Here, the authors show the potential for rhodopsin aggregates to play a role in retinal degeneration.

    • Sreelakshmi Vasudevan
    • , Subhadip Senapati
    •  & Paul S.–H. Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Restoring mitochondrial function has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy for diabetic retinopathy. Here, the authors show that mitochondrial hyperfusion blunts mitophagy during the disease process, and that rescuing this process pharmacologically confers retinal neuroprotection independent of an improved glycaemic status in type-1 diabetic mice.

    • Aidan Anderson
    • , Nada Alfahad
    •  & Jose R. Hombrebueno

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The photoreceptor cilium contains an exclusive group of proteins responsible for capturing light and eliciting a visual response. Here, the authors show that the tectonic complex plays a role in the barrier that prevents unsolicited protein entry into the cilium.

    • Hanh M. Truong
    • , Kevin O. Cruz-Colón
    •  & Jillian N. Pearring

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many molecularly classified retinal cell types lack spatial information. Here, authors used MERFISH to create a spatial atlas of the mouse retina, leveraging co-embedding with scRNA-seq to explore spatially dependent gene expression in retinal cell subtypes.

    • Jongsu Choi
    • , Jin Li
    •  & Rui Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For homeostatic plasticity, neuronal circuits rely on poorly understood retrograde signals. Here, the authors identify a visual activity-dependent feedback loop mediated by the secreted Allnighter pseudokinase with effects on brain-wide proteostasis and sleep.

    • Shashank Shekhar
    • , Andrew T. Moehlman
    •  & Helmut Krämer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ganglion cells classically respond to either light increase (ON) or decrease (OFF). Here, the authors show that during natural scene stimulation, a single ganglion cell can switch between ON and OFF depending on the visual context.

    • Matías A. Goldin
    • , Baptiste Lefebvre
    •  & Olivier Marre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural coding for motion direction has been studied intensively in the visual cortex of non-human primates. Here, the authors establish an origin for direction selectivity in the retina of the macaque monkey.

    • Yeon Jin Kim
    • , Beth B. Peterson
    •  & Dennis M. Dacey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Limits of AAV-mediated gene therapy include targeting dominant mutations and inducing long-term transgene expression. Here, the authors show that AAV-HITI results in efficient allele-independent integration of a donor DNA in both retina and liver providing therapeutic benefit in mouse models of either a genetic form of blindness or a lysosomal storage disease, respectively.

    • Patrizia Tornabene
    • , Rita Ferla
    •  & Alberto Auricchio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Primary cilia are key sensory organelles whose dysfunction leads to ciliopathy disorders such as Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS). Here they identify a role for Bbs1 in lipid homeostasis of photoreceptor outer segments in zebrafish, which may contribute to vision loss in patients with Bardet-Biedl syndrome.

    • Markus Masek
    • , Christelle Etard
    •  & Ruxandra Bachmann-Gagescu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Super-enhancers are regions of genomic DNA comprised of multiple putative enhancers that contribute to dynamic gene expression patterns during development. Here the authors identify a modular super-enhancer in murine retinal development and show that distinct modules are responsible for retinal progenitor cell proliferation during early and bipolar neuron genesis during late retinal development.

    • Victoria Honnell
    • , Jackie L. Norrie
    •  & Michael A. Dyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A comprehensive analysis of the ocular networks among various tissues is necessary to understand eye physiology in health and disease. Here the authors present a multi-species single-cell transcriptomic atlas consisting of cells of the cornea, iris, ciliary body, neural retina, retinal pigmented epithelium, and choroid.

    • Pradeep Gautam
    • , Kiyofumi Hamashima
    •  & Yuin-Han Loh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cholinergic neurons may transmit information via fast synaptic, point-to-point signaling or diffuse, slow extra-synaptic signaling. The authors show that ACh from a single vesicle triggers synchronous miniature currents in two neurons, showing that ACh can spread significant distances to drive rapid ‘synaptic’ signals.

    • Santhosh Sethuramanujam
    • , Akihiro Matsumoto
    •  & Gautam B. Awatramani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To see during day and night, the retina adapts to a trillion-fold change in light intensity. The authors show that an accurate read-out of retinal signals over this intensity range requires that brain circuits account for changing noise correlations across populations of retinal neurons.

    • Kiersten Ruda
    • , Joel Zylberberg
    •  & Greg D. Field

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurons compute by integrating synaptic inputs across their dendritic arbor. Here, the authors show that distinct cell-types of mouse retinal ganglion cells that receive similar excitatory inputs have different biophysical mechanisms of input integration to generate their unique response tuning.

    • Yanli Ran
    • , Ziwei Huang
    •  & Thomas Euler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Saccadic suppression is frequently attributed to active suppressive signals derived from eye movement commands. Here, the authors show that visual-only mechanisms starting in the retina can account for perceptual saccadic suppression properties without the need for motor-based suppression commands.

    • Saad Idrees
    • , Matthias P. Baumann
    •  & Ziad M. Hafed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Non-human primate models are important for the development of high quality vision restoration therapies for blindness. Here, the authors demonstrate restoration of light responses in foveal retinal ganglion cells of the living macaque following optogenetic gene therapy.

    • Juliette E. McGregor
    • , Tyler Godat
    •  & William H. Merigan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visual features are streamed into higher visual areas (HVAs), but how representations in HVAs are built, based on retinal output channels, is unknown. Here, the authors show that specific connectivity of cortical neurons routes retina-originated direction-selective signaling into distinct HVAs.

    • Rune Rasmussen
    • , Akihiro Matsumoto
    •  & Keisuke Yonehara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Genome-wide association studies have identified variants associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD); however, other than identifying this as a complement mediated inflammatory disease, little biology has emerged. Here, authors used novel computational tools from the Broad Institute to examine the relationship of single-cell transcriptomics and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the human retina and demonstrate that GWAS-associated risk alleles associated with AMD are enriched in glia and vascular cells and that human retinal glia are more diverse than previously thought

    • Madhvi Menon
    • , Shahin Mohammadi
    •  & Brian P. Hafler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanisms of contextual modulation in direction selective ganglion cells in the retina remain unclear. Here, the authors find that that On-Off direction-selective ganglion cells are differentially sensitive to discontinuities of dark and bright moving edges in the visual environment and, using synapse-specific genetic manipulations with functional measurements, reveal the microcircuits underlying this contextual sensitivity.

    • Xiaolin Huang
    • , Melissa Rangel
    •  & Wei Wei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The perception of spatial patterns (form vision) is thought to rely on rod and cone cells in the retina. Here, the authors show that a third kind of retinal cell, melanopsin-expressing ganglion cells, can also detect form in humans, under particular conditions.

    • Annette E. Allen
    • , Franck P. Martial
    •  & Robert J. Lucas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Activating the spared neurons downstream of rods and cones is a potential therapeutic approach for retinal degeneration, but has been limited by the characteristics of the opsins available. Here, the authors use medium wavelength cone opsin which has faster kinetics than others and show that it resolves some of these difficulties in a mouse model.

    • Michael H. Berry
    • , Amy Holt
    •  & Ehud Y. Isacoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease of which the etiology is still unclear. Here the authors show that elevation of intraocular pressure induces T cell infiltration in the eyes. Furthermore, they show that T cell cross-reactivity between endogenous and commensal antigens contributes to disease onset in mice.

    • Huihui Chen
    • , Kin-Sang Cho
    •  & Dong F. Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proteasomal overload can be found in a broad spectrum of mouse models of retinal degeneration. Here the authors find that overexpressing the PA28α subunit of the 11S proteasome cap increased the number of surviving functional photoreceptor cells in a mouse model of retinal degeneration bearing the P23H mutation in rhodopsin.

    • Ekaterina S. Lobanova
    • , Stella Finkelstein
    •  & Vadim Y. Arshavsky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Retinal prostheses are being developed to fight severe retinal diseases where wider visual field and higher visual acuity are desired. Here Ferlauto et al. design a foldable and wide-field epiretinal prosthesis that can meet the performance and safety requirements and show a long lifetime of 2 years.

    • Laura Ferlauto
    • , Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi
    •  & Diego Ghezzi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visual input received by photoreceptors is relayed to retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), which have selectivity for inputs of certain orientations. Here, the authors show that gap junction-mediated input onto one type of RGC contributes to its orientation selectivity.

    • Amurta Nath
    •  & Gregory W. Schwartz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Retinal ganglion cell subtypes are traditionally thought to encode a single visual feature across the visual field to form a feature map. Here the authors show that fast OFF ganglion cells in fact respond to two visual features, either object position or speed, depending on the stimulus location.

    • Stéphane Deny
    • , Ulisse Ferrari
    •  & Olivier Marre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To restore sight after retinal degeneration, one approach is to express light-sensitive proteins in remaining cells. Here the authors combine a light-sensitive engineered G protein-coupled receptor and ion channels to restore ON and OFF responses as well as superior visual pattern discrimination.

    • Michael H. Berry
    • , Amy Holt
    •  & Ehud Y. Isacoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Large electronics limit low-noise, non-invasive electrophysiological measurements to a thousand simultaneously recording channels. Here the authors build an array of 65k simultaneously recording and stimulating electrodes and use it to sort and classify single neurons across the entire mouse retina.

    • David Tsai
    • , Daniel Sawyer
    •  & Kenneth L. Shepard

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