Morphology and visual pigment content of photoreceptors from injured goldfish retina

Adult teleost fish retinas can regenerate neurons following either surgical or pharmacological injury. The cellular milieu of the damaged retina within which regenerated neurons are produced might be different in these two model systems of retinal injury, and thus the phenotypic attributes of regenerated neurons in the two model systems might also differ. To determine if the phenotypic attributes of photoreceptors, and by extension the recovery of vision, are different between these two model systems, we compared the visual pigment content and morphology of photoreceptors derived from goldfish retinas of both models with control retina. Visual pigments-which consist of a protein moiety (opsin) and a chromophore-were analyzed in single, isolated photoreceptors using microspectrophotometric techniques. We report that visual pigments and photoreceptor morphologies in the surgical model closely matched those of native retina. In contrast, neither photoreceptor morphology nor visual pigment content matched closely in the pharmacological model. The results indicate that phenotypic attributes of photoreceptors can differ significantly between the two model systems of retinal regeneration, but that in both systems, rod- and cone-mediated visual functions can potentially be reestablished.