Coexpression of SOD2 and Catalase in rd10 mice did not slow rod cell death.
Although it will be important to define the processes that lead to HIF1-dependent rod cell death and to HIF2-dependent degeneration of RPE cells, their detailed knowledge might not be essential to establish therapeutic approaches.
Here we report that following gene transfer of β-catenin, cell-cycle-reactivated MG can be reprogrammed to generate rod photoreceptors by subsequent gene transfer of transcription factors essential for rod cell fate specification and determination.
the question is the the cone cell or rod cell have passive properties or not.Their spike is same with cortex neuron,such as pyramidal neuron or purkinje neuron?. turns up several published models.
Rod cell death causes night blindness, but visual disability and blindness result from cone degeneration and therefore it is critical to determine the mechanisms by which it occurs.
The rod cell has an extraordinarily specialized structure that allows it to carry out its unique function of detecting individual photons of light.
Given that the transcription factor NRL determines rod cell fate, we performed expression profiling of developing NRL-positive (rods) and NRL-negative (S-cone-like) mouse photoreceptors.
However, nearly all mutations lead to a common blinding phenotype that initiates with rod cell death, followed by loss of cones.
The mechanism of rod cell death varies depending upon the gene that is mutated and the rate that rods degenerate is an important prognostic feature, because cones do not begin to degenerate until almost all rods have been eliminated.
Both the structural features of the rod and the metabolic processes required for highly amplified light detection seem to have rendered the rod especially sensitive to structural and metabolic defects, so that a large number of gene defects are primarily associated with rod cell death and give rise to blinding retinal dystrophies.
Vertebrate rod cell reproduced from Cote (2006).
