Slits In The Retina

The Slit family of guidance molecules acts through their Roundabout (Robo) receptors to influence axon pathfinding. This week, Thompson et al. show that Slits help restrict the retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons to the optic fiber layer (OFL) in the ventral retina, but in dorsal retina they affect the orderly growth of axons within the OFL. RGCs expressed slit1 and slit2, both of which are chemorepellant for RGC axons. In wild-type and slit1-deficient embryonic mice, RGC axons were restricted to the OFL, but in mice lacking slit2 or slit1 and slit2, some axons strayed away from the OFL toward the outer retina. Interestingly, this aberrant patterning was twice as common in axon bundles of the ventral retina compared with the dorsal retina. In mice lacking slit2, pathfinding errors occurred within the OFL, but only in the dorsal retina.

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Hannah Thompson, Olivier Camand, David Barker, and Lynda Erskine

Source: News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience

Contact: Sara Harris
Society for Neuroscience
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Slits In The Retina