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Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics

The avian retina possesses one of the most sophisticated cone photoreceptor systems among vertebrates. Birds have five types of cones including four single cones, which support tetrachromatic color vision and a double cone, which is thought to mediate achromatic motion perception. Despite this richn...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kram, Yoseph A., Mantey, Stephanie, Corbo, Joseph C.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2813877/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20126550
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008992
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author Kram, Yoseph A.
Mantey, Stephanie
Corbo, Joseph C.
author_facet Kram, Yoseph A.
Mantey, Stephanie
Corbo, Joseph C.
author_sort Kram, Yoseph A.
collection PubMed
description The avian retina possesses one of the most sophisticated cone photoreceptor systems among vertebrates. Birds have five types of cones including four single cones, which support tetrachromatic color vision and a double cone, which is thought to mediate achromatic motion perception. Despite this richness, very little is known about the spatial organization of avian cones and its adaptive significance. Here we show that the five cone types of the chicken independently tile the retina as highly ordered mosaics with a characteristic spacing between cones of the same type. Measures of topological order indicate that double cones are more highly ordered than single cones, possibly reflecting their posited role in motion detection. Although cones show spacing interactions that are cell type-specific, all cone types use the same density-dependent yardstick to measure intercone distance. We propose a simple developmental model that can account for these observations. We also show that a single parameter, the global regularity index, defines the regularity of all five cone mosaics. Lastly, we demonstrate similar cone distributions in three additional avian species, suggesting that these patterning principles are universal among birds. Since regular photoreceptor spacing is critical for uniform sampling of visual space, the cone mosaics of the avian retina represent an elegant example of the emergence of adaptive global patterning secondary to simple local interactions between individual photoreceptors. Our results indicate that the evolutionary pressures that gave rise to the avian retina's various adaptations for enhanced color discrimination also acted to fine-tune its spatial sampling of color and luminance.
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spelling pubmed-28138772010-02-02 Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics Kram, Yoseph A. Mantey, Stephanie Corbo, Joseph C. PLoS One Research Article The avian retina possesses one of the most sophisticated cone photoreceptor systems among vertebrates. Birds have five types of cones including four single cones, which support tetrachromatic color vision and a double cone, which is thought to mediate achromatic motion perception. Despite this richness, very little is known about the spatial organization of avian cones and its adaptive significance. Here we show that the five cone types of the chicken independently tile the retina as highly ordered mosaics with a characteristic spacing between cones of the same type. Measures of topological order indicate that double cones are more highly ordered than single cones, possibly reflecting their posited role in motion detection. Although cones show spacing interactions that are cell type-specific, all cone types use the same density-dependent yardstick to measure intercone distance. We propose a simple developmental model that can account for these observations. We also show that a single parameter, the global regularity index, defines the regularity of all five cone mosaics. Lastly, we demonstrate similar cone distributions in three additional avian species, suggesting that these patterning principles are universal among birds. Since regular photoreceptor spacing is critical for uniform sampling of visual space, the cone mosaics of the avian retina represent an elegant example of the emergence of adaptive global patterning secondary to simple local interactions between individual photoreceptors. Our results indicate that the evolutionary pressures that gave rise to the avian retina's various adaptations for enhanced color discrimination also acted to fine-tune its spatial sampling of color and luminance. Public Library of Science 2010-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC2813877/ /pubmed/20126550 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008992 Text en Kram et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kram, Yoseph A.
Mantey, Stephanie
Corbo, Joseph C.
Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics
title Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics
title_full Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics
title_fullStr Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics
title_full_unstemmed Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics
title_short Avian Cone Photoreceptors Tile the Retina as Five Independent, Self-Organizing Mosaics
title_sort avian cone photoreceptors tile the retina as five independent, self-organizing mosaics
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2813877/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20126550
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008992
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