FLRT3 Marks Direction-Selective Retinal Ganglion Cells That Project to the Medial Terminal Nucleus

The mammalian retina extracts a multitude of diverse features from the visual scene such as color, contrast, and direction of motion. These features are transmitted separately to the brain by more than 40 different retinal ganglion cell (RGC) subtypes. However, so far only a few genetic markers exis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in molecular neuroscience 2021-12, Vol.14, p.790466-790466
Main Authors: Ruff, Tobias, Peters, Christian, Matsumoto, Akihiro, Ihle, Stephan J, Morales, Pilar Alcalá, Gaitanos, Louise, Yonehara, Keisuke, Del Toro, Daniel, Klein, Rüdiger
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amacrine cells
Antibodies
Brain
Color vision
downward movement
Eye movements
FLRT3
Fluorescent indicators
Genetic markers
Histology
Kinases
Molecular Neuroscience
MTN
ON direction selective
Retina
Retinal ganglion cells
RGC
Stem cells
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Summary:The mammalian retina extracts a multitude of diverse features from the visual scene such as color, contrast, and direction of motion. These features are transmitted separately to the brain by more than 40 different retinal ganglion cell (RGC) subtypes. However, so far only a few genetic markers exist to fully characterize the different RGC subtypes. Here, we present a novel genetic Flrt3-CreERT2 knock-in mouse that labels a small subpopulation of RGCs. Using single-cell injection of fluorescent dyes in Flrt3 positive RGCs, we distinguished four morphological RGC subtypes. Anterograde tracings using a fluorescent Cre-dependent Adeno-associated virus (AAV) revealed that a subgroup of Flrt3 positive RGCs specifically project to the medial terminal nucleus (MTN), which is part of the accessory optic system (AOS) and is essential in driving reflex eye movements for retinal image stabilization. Functional characterization using patch-clamp recordings showed that the MTN-projecting Flrt3 RGCs preferentially respond to downward motion in an ON-fashion. These neurons distribute in a regular pattern and most of them are bistratified at the level of the ON and OFF bands of cholinergic starburst amacrine cells where they express the known ON-OFF direction-selective RGC marker CART. Together, our results indicate that MTN-projecting Flrt3 RGCs represent a new functionally homogeneous AOS projecting direction-selective RGC subpopulation.
ISSN:1662-5099
1662-5099
DOI:10.3389/fnmol.2021.790466