Modeling binary and graded cone cell fate patterning in the mouse retina

A mouse model of cone photoreceptor function loss (cpfl9) with degeneration due to a mutation in Gucy2e

During routine screening of mouse strains and stocks by the Eye Mutant Resource at The Jackson Laboratory for genetic mouse models of human ocular disorders, we identified cpfl9, a mouse model with cone photoreceptor function loss. The mice exhibited an early-onset phenotype that was easily recognized by the absence of a cone-mediated b-wave electroretinography response and by a reduction in rod-mediated photoresponses at four weeks of age. By genetic mapping and high-throughput sequencing of a whole exome capture library of cpfl9, a homozygous 25 bp deletion within exon 11 of the Gucy2e gene was identified, which is predicted to result in a frame shift leading to premature termination. The corresponding protein in human, retinal guanylate cyclase 1 (GUCY2D), plays an important role in rod and cone photoreceptor cell function. Loss-of-function mutations in human GUCY2D cause LCA1, one of the most common forms of Leber congenital amaurosis, which results in blindness at birth or in early childhood. The early loss of cone and reduced rod photoreceptor cell function in the cpfl9 mutant is accompanied by a later, progressive loss of cone and rod photoreceptor cells, which may be relevant to understanding disease pathology in a subset of LCA1 patients and in individuals with cone-rod dystrophy caused by recessive GUCY2D variants. cpfl9 mice will be useful for studying the role of Gucy2e in the retina.

The evolutionary history and spectral tuning of vertebrate visual opsins

Many animals depend on the sense of vision for survival. In eumetazoans, vision requires specialized, light-sensitive cells called photoreceptors. Light reaches the photoreceptors and triggers the excitation of light-detecting proteins called opsins. Here, we describe the story of visual opsin evolution from the ancestral bilaterian to the extant vertebrate lineages. We explain the mechanisms determining color vision of extant vertebrates, focusing on opsin gene losses, duplications, and the expression regulation of vertebrate opsins. We describe the sequence variation both within and between species that has tweaked the sensitivities of opsin proteins towards different wavelengths of light. We provide an extensive resource of wavelength sensitivities and mutations that have diverged light sensitivity in many vertebrate species and predict how these mutations were accumulated in each lineage based on parsimony. We suggest possible natural and sexual selection mechanisms underlying these spectral differences. Understanding how molecular changes allow for functional adaptation of animals to different environments is a major goal in the field, and therefore identifying mutations affecting vision and their relationship to photic selection pressures is imperative. The goal of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of opsin evolution in vertebrates.

Functions of retinal astrocytes and Müller cells in mammalian myopia

Background

Changes in the retina and choroid blood vessels are regularly observed in myopia. However, if the retinal glial cells, which directly contact blood vessels, play a role in mammalian myopia is unknown. We aimed to explore the potential role and mechanism of retinal glial cells in form deprived myopia.

Methods

We adapted the mice form-deprivation myopia model by covering the right eye and left the left eye open for control, measured the ocular structure with anterior segment optical coherence tomography, evaluated changes in the morphology and distribution of retinal glial cells by fluorescence staining and western blotting; we also searched the online GEO databases to obtain relative gene lists and confirmed them in the form-deprivation myopia mouse retina at mRNA and protein level.

Results

Compared with the open eye, the ocular axial length (3.54 ± 0.006 mm v.s. 3.48 ± 0.004 mm, p = 0.027) and vitreous chamber depth (3.07 ± 0.005 mm v.s. 2.98 ± 0.006 mm, p = 0.007) in the covered eye became longer. Both glial fibrillary acidic protein and excitatory amino acid transporters 4 elevated. There were 12 common pathways in human myopia and anoxic astrocytes. The key proteins were also highly relevant to atropine target proteins. In mice, two common pathways were found in myopia and anoxic Müller cells. Seven main genes and four key proteins were significantly changed in the mice form-deprivation myopia retinas.

Conclusion

Retinal astrocytes and Müller cells were activated in myopia. They may response to stimuli and secretory acting factors, and might be a valid target for atropine.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12886-022-02643-0.

An enhancer located in a Pde6c intron drives transient expression in the cone photoreceptors of developing mouse and human retinas

How cone photoreceptors are formed during retinal development is only partially known. This is in part because we do not fully understand the gene regulatory network responsible for cone genesis. We reasoned that cis-regulatory elements (enhancers) active in nascent cones would be regulated by the same upstream network that controls cone formation. To dissect this network, we searched for enhancers active in developing cones. By electroporating enhancer-driven fluorescent reporter plasmids, we observed that a sequence within an intron of the cone-specific Pde6c gene acted as an enhancer in developing mouse cones. Similar fluorescent reporter plasmids were used to generate stable transgenic human induced pluripotent stem cells that were then grown into three-dimensional human retinal organoids. These organoids contained fluorescently labeled cones, demonstrating that the Pde6c enhancer was also active in human cones. We observed that enhancer activity was transient and labeled a minor population of developing rod photoreceptors in both mouse and human systems. This cone-enriched pattern argues that the Pde6c enhancer is activated in cells poised between rod and cone fates. Additionally, it suggests that the Pde6c enhancer is activated by the same regulatory network that selects or stabilizes cone fate choice. To further understand this regulatory network, we identified essential enhancer sequence regions through a series of mutagenesis experiments. This suggested that the Pde6c enhancer was regulated by transcription factor binding at five or more locations. Binding site predictions implicated transcription factor families known to control photoreceptor formation and families not previously associated with cone development. These results provide a framework for deciphering the gene regulatory network that controls cone genesis in both human and mouse systems. Our new transgenic human stem cell lines provide a tool for determining which cone developmental mechanisms are shared and distinct between mice and humans.

Mettl14-mediated m6A modification is essential for visual function and retinal photoreceptor survival

Background

As the most abundant epigenetic modification of eukaryotic mRNA, N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modification has been shown to play a role in mammalian nervous system development and function by regulating mRNA synthesis and degeneration. However, the role of m6A modification in retinal photoreceptors remains unknown.

Results

We generated the first retina-specific Mettl14-knockout mouse models using the Rho-Cre and HRGP-Cre lines and investigated the functions of Mettl14 in retinal rod and cone photoreceptors. Our data showed that loss of Mettl14 in rod cells causes a weakened scotopic photoresponse and rod degeneration. Further study revealed the ectopic accumulation of multiple outer segment (OS) proteins in the inner segment (IS). Deficiency of Mettl14 in cone cells led to the mislocalization of cone opsin proteins and the progressive death of cone cells. Moreover, Mettl14 depletion resulted in drastic decreases in METTL3/WTAP levels and reduced m6A methylation levels. Mechanistically, transcriptomic analyses in combination with MeRIP-seq illustrated that m6A depletion via inactivation of Mettl14 resulted in reduced expression levels of multiple phototransduction- and cilium-associated genes, which subsequently led to compromised ciliogenesis and impaired synthesis and transport of OS-residing proteins in rod cells.

Conclusions

Our data demonstrate that Mettl14 plays an important role in regulating phototransduction and ciliogenesis events and is essential for photoreceptor function and survival, highlighting the importance of m6A modification in visual function.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-022-01335-x.

Patterning and Development of Photoreceptors in the Human Retina

Humans rely on visual cues to navigate the world around them. Vision begins with the detection of light by photoreceptor cells in the retina, a light-sensitive tissue located at the back of the eye. Photoreceptor types are defined by morphology, gene expression, light sensitivity, and function. Rod photoreceptors function in low-light vision and motion detection, and cone photoreceptors are responsible for high-acuity daytime and trichromatic color vision. In this review, we discuss the generation, development, and patterning of photoreceptors in the human retina. We describe our current understanding of how photoreceptors are patterned in concentric regions. We conclude with insights into mechanisms of photoreceptor differentiation drawn from studies of model organisms and human retinal organoids.

Visual pigment-deficient cones survive and mediate visual signaling despite the lack of outer segments

Rhodopsin and cone opsins are essential for light detection in vertebrate rods and cones, respectively. It is well established that rhodopsin is required for rod phototransduction, outer segment disk morphogenesis, and rod viability. However, the roles of cone opsins are less well understood. In this study, we adopted a loss-of-function approach to investigate the physiological roles of cone opsins in mice. We showed that cones lacking cone opsins do not form normal outer segments due to the lack of disk morphogenesis. Surprisingly, cone opsin-deficient cones survive for at least 12 mo, which is in stark contrast to the rapid rod degeneration observed in rhodopsin-deficient mice, suggesting that cone opsins are dispensable for cone viability. Although the mutant cones do not respond to light directly, they maintain a normal dark current and continue to mediate visual signaling by relaying the rod signal through rod-cone gap junctions. Our work reveals a striking difference between the role of rhodopsin and cone opsins in photoreceptor viability.

Thyroid hormone signaling specifies cone photoreceptor subtypes during eye development: Insights from model organisms and human stem cell-derived retinal organoids

Cones are the color-detecting photoreceptors of the vertebrate eye. Cones are specialized into subtypes whose functions are determined by the expression of color-sensitive opsin proteins. Organisms differ greatly in the number and patterning of cone subtypes. Despite these differences, thyroid hormone is an important regulator of opsin expression in most vertebrates. In this chapter, we outline how the timing of thyroid hormone signaling controls cone subtype fates during retinal development. We first examine our current understanding of cone subtype specification in model organisms and then describe advances in human stem cell-derived organoid technology that identified mechanisms controlling development of the human retina.

True S-cones are concentrated in the ventral mouse retina and wired for color detection in the upper visual field

Color, an important visual cue for survival, is encoded by comparing signals from photoreceptors with different spectral sensitivities. The mouse retina expresses a short wavelength-sensitive and a middle/long wavelength-sensitive opsin (S- and M-opsin), forming opposing, overlapping gradients along the dorsal-ventral axis. Here, we analyzed the distribution of all cone types across the entire retina for two commonly used mouse strains. We found, unexpectedly, that 'true S-cones' (S-opsin only) are highly concentrated (up to 30% of cones) in ventral retina. Moreover, S-cone bipolar cells (SCBCs) are also skewed towards ventral retina, with wiring patterns matching the distribution of true S-cones. In addition, true S-cones in the ventral retina form clusters, which may augment synaptic input to SCBCs. Such a unique true S-cone and SCBC connecting pattern forms a basis for mouse color vision, likely reflecting evolutionary adaptation to enhance color coding for the upper visual field suitable for mice's habitat and behavior.