The Light Response of ON Bipolar Neurons Requires Gαo

By A. Dhingra, A. Lyubarsky, M. Jiang, E. Pugh, L. Birnbaumer, Peter Sterling, N. Vardi. Journal of Neuroscience, 2000

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ON bipolar neurons in retina detect the glutamate released by rods and cones via metabotropic glutamate receptor 6 (mGluR6), whose cascade is unknown. The trimeric G-protein Go might mediate this cascade because it colocalizes with mGluR6. To test this, we studied the retina in mice negative for the α subunit of Go (Gαo−/−). Retinal layering, key cell types, synaptic structure, and mGluR6 expression were all normal, as was the a-wave of the electroretinogram, which represents the rod and cone photocurrents. However, the b-wave of the electroretinogram, both rod- and cone-driven components, was entirely missing. Because the b-wave represents the massed response of ON bipolar cells, its loss in the Gαo null mouse establishes that the light response of the ON bipolar cell requires Go. This represents the first function to be defined in vivo for the α subunit of the most abundant G-protein of the brain .

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4a54436f26b1c105e7c61d9653d25fa3816eb7ef

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Citations in the corpus

Mammalian G proteins and their cell type specific functions. (2005, background): “In mice lacking mGluR6 or the G o splice variant G o1, the modulation of ON bipolar cells in response to light is abolished (142, 143, 425), indicating that Go is the principle mediator of glutamate-induced inhibition of ON bipolar cells, which occurs especially in the absence of light.”
Neural remodeling in retinal degeneration. (2003, background): “The mGluR6 protein may still be expressed at low levels and fail to insert into the membrane or other components of the mGluR6 signaling pathway, such as Goa (Dhingra et al., 2000, 2002) may be lost as well.”