The Intrinsic Blue Light Responses of Avian Müller Glial Cells Imply Calcium Release from Internal Stores

MARCHESE, NATALIA A.

ASN Neuro

SAGE

Año: 2022 vol. 14

1759-0914

he retina of vertebrates is responsible for capturing light through visual (cones and rods) and non-visual photoreceptors (intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and horizontal cells) triggering a number of essential activities associated to image- and non-image forming functions (photic entrainment of daily rhythms, pupillary light reflexes, pineal melatonin inhibition, among others). Although the retina contains diverse types of neuronal based-photoreceptors cells, originally classified as ciliary- or rhabdomeric-like types, in recent years, it has been shown that the major glial cell type of the retina, the Müller glial cells (MCs), express blue photopigments as Opn3 (encephalopsin) and Opn5 (neuropsin) and display light responses associated to intracellular Ca2+ mobilization. These findings strongly propose MCs as novel retinal photodetectors (Rios et al 2019). Herein, we further investigated the intrinsic light responses of primary cultures of MCs from embryonic chic