Journal Article
Blind cavefish retain functional connectivity in the tectum despite loss of retinal input
Lloyd, E., McDole, B., Privat, M., Jaggard, J.B., Duboue, E.R., Sumbre, G. and Keene, A.C.
Record Number:
5987
Year:
2022
Journal:
Current Biology
Pages:
3720-3730
Volume:
32
Notes:
2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license
Abstract:
Sensory systems display remarkable plasticity and are under strong evolutionary selection. TheMexican cavefish,
Astyanax mexicanus, consists of eyed river-dwelling surface populations and multiple independent cave
populations that have converged on eye loss, providing the opportunity to examine the evolution of sensory circuits
in response to environmental perturbation. Functional analysis acrossmultiple transgenic populations expressing
GCaMP6s showed that functional connectivity of the optic tectumlargely did not differ between populations,
except for the selective loss of negatively correlated activity within the cavefish tectum, suggesting
positively correlated neural activity is resistant to an evolved loss of input fromthe retina. Furthermore, analysis
of surface-cave hybrid fish reveals that changes in the tectumare genetically distinct from those encoding eye
loss. Together, these findings uncover the independent evolution of multiple components of the visual system
and establish the use of functional imaging in A. mexicanus to study neural circuit evolution.
Times Cited:
1
Relevent Species: