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Mature, growing ganglion cells acquire new synapses in the retina of the goldfish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2009

Peter F. Hitchcock
Peter F. Hitchcock
Affiliation:
Departments of Ophthalmology and Anatomy and Cell Biology, The University of Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor
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Abstract

The goldfish retina grows throughout the animal’s life, primarily by a balloon-like expansion. With this expansion, dendritic arbors of ganglion cells show scaled growth; arbors increase in size from small to large with no change in their architecture (Hitchcock & Easter, 1986; Bloomfield & Hitchcock, 1991). The study reported here showed that ganglion cell arbors acquire new synapses with this growth. Arbors from a single type of ganglion cell in retinas of small, young and large, old fish were intracellularly filled with horseradish peroxidase, examined electron microscopically, and the synapses contacting them counted and compared (small arbors vs. large arbors). The small and large arbors had similar numbers and orders of dendritic branches (i.e. similar architectures), but the large arbors were significantly larger than the small ones. The increase in arbor size was correlated with a 2.7x and 1.9x increase in the number of ribbon and conventional synaptic contacts, respectively. The addition of new synapses is proposed as a mechanism by which the signaling properties of the enlarging ganglion cells can remain constant.

Keywords

SynapseDendritic arborsHorseradish peroxidaseElectron microscopyIntracellular injectionSynaptic integrationInput resistance
Type
Research Article
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , March 1993 , pp. 219 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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