[Student Organized Seminar] Degeneration and regeneration of circuits in the vertebrate retina Center for Developmental Biology

Home > Seminars and Events > [Student Organized Seminar] Degeneration and regeneration of circuits in the vertebrate retina

Category	Other
Date and Time	2015-07-29 16:30 - 17:30
Venue	Auditorium C1F
Speaker	Rachel Wong
Affiliation	Department of Biological Structure, University of Washington
Title	[Student Organized Seminar] Degeneration and regeneration of circuits in the vertebrate retina
Poster	click here to download(PDF)
Host	Yuko Iwasaki
Summary	As in other parts of the nervous system, damage or disease in the vertebrate retina leads to a loss of synaptic connections and often, rewiring of the surviving neurons. To better understand the progression of circuit disassembly, we have examined the sequence of changes in retinal ganglion cell morphology, connectivity and function prior to cell death in a mouse model of glaucoma. We find that synaptic connectivity is reduced prior to loss of dendrites, and that the rate of synapse disassembly varies with ganglion cell type. To gain insight into how precise circuits can be re-established during repair, we took advantage of the intrinsic regenerative capacity of zebrafish and determined the rewiring specificity of surviving neurons with the new population of presynaptic cells. We show that surviving neurons maintain specificity in their choice of synaptic partners but only for a given period of time, after which they connect with non-preferred partners. Thus, rapid intervention may be necessary not only to prevent further cell loss, but also to facilitate the ability of damaged circuits to regenerate their original patterns of connectivity. _