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Interesting: Gene Regulator, Onecut1 Important To Retinal Development And Integrity

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This paper, Onecut1 Is Essential for Horizontal Cell Genesis and Retinal Integrity in the Journal of Neuroscience by authors Fuguo Wu, Renzhong Li, Yumiko Umino, Tadeusz J. Kaczynski, Darshan Sapkota, Shengguo Li, Mengqing Xiang, Steven J. Fliesler, David M. Sherry, Maureen Gannon, Eduardo Solessio, and Xiuqian Mu describes the gene regulator Onecut1 as being the key to healthy retinal development and good vision in adulthood.

Essentially, Onecut1 is critical for the formation of horizontal cells, but of fundamental importance to retinal degenerative research, this work implies that horizontal cells might be necessary for the survival of photoreceptor cells.  Of course we have known for some years that horizontal cells are some of the very first cells to respond to retinal degeneration by extensively remodeling, but this is an interesting result that suggests a direct dependence of photoreceptors on the horizontal cells themselves for survival.

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Notable Paper: Partial Rescue of Retinal Function in Chronically Hypoglycemic Mice

This paper by Yumiko Umino, Nicolas Cuenca, Drew Everhart, Laura Fernandez-Sanchez, Robert B. Barlow and Eduardo Solessio examined late onset retinal degeneration in a model of diabetic retinopathy.  Specifically, this manuscript attempted to examine the impact on retinas from the Gcgr knockout mice with long term high dietary glucose to see if that rescues retinal structure and physiology in the aged animal.  Interestingly, prolonged exposure to to the diet induced euglycemia did improve retinal function, but did not result in re-restablishement of synaptic connectivity lost in hypoglycemia.  The curious part about this is that there seems to be an ability to maintain metabolic status in these animals over long periods of time in spite of the loss of the synaptic connectivity.