Axonal redirection at the dorsoventral intraretinal boundary.

Abstract

Cobaltous-lysine applied to the goldfish optic nerve backfilled retinal ganglion cells and their axons. Confined to the ventronasal and ventrotemporal retina was a small population of retinal ganglion cells whose axons traveled dorsally and parallel to the retinal margin. On reaching the boundary between dorsal and ventral retina, the axons arched, joined radially oriented bundles of axons, and traveled toward the optic disk. Control studies showed that the axons came from retinal ganglion cells rather than from retinopetal cells. The somatic area of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) with circumferential axons was 30-50 microns, and was similar to that of average ganglion cells. The axons of these cells coursed between the optic fiber and ganglion cell layers or between the ganglion cell and inner plexiform layers. Many somata were displaced slightly toward the inner plexiform layer, but were not really displaced ganglion cells. The aberrant axonal trajectory may be related to the slightly displaced location of the cell. However, ganglion cells that are displaced to the edge of the inner nuclear layer usually have radially coursing axons. We digitized the coordinates of the bending points and the dorsoventral retinal boundary. On average, the bending points occurred within 100 microns of the dorsoventral retinal border. These findings suggest that some molecular, rather than mechanical, factor at the dorsoventral retinal boundary alters the course of the circumferential axons. Furthermore, because there are cells with circumferential axons throughout the ventral retina, the data imply that at least ventral RGC axons avoid mingling with the axons from dorsal RGCs.