A Comparative Study of Protein Kinase C-Like Immunoreactive Cells in the Retina

Abstract

The present study is a morphological and quantitative analysis of protein kinase C-like immunoreactive (PKC-L ir) bipolar cells in the retinas of five different vertebrate species (chicken, tench, zebrafish, goldfish and rat). The morphology of PKC-L-ir bipolar cell axon terminals in fish differs significantly from those of chicken and rat retinas. Fish have bulky terminals whereas chicken and rat have their terminals in the form of small knob-shaped branches. In tench and goldfish, PKC-L-ir bipolar cells gradually decrease in size from the medial (i.e., in tench: mean ± SD soma area of 30.09 ± 5.98 µm²) to the peripheral (i.e., in tench: 19.93 ± 1.73 µm²) retinal regions. This is not observed in chicken, rat or zebrafish where there is more homogeneity in s oma and axon terminal sizes between different retinal regions. Except in chicken, cell density increases from the central (i.e., in tench: mean ± SD 1795.88 ± 242.35 cells/mm²) to the peripheral (i.e., in tench: 4295.41 ± 279.23 cells/mm²) retina. This study provides data that show relevant differences in the PKC-L-ir bipolar morphology and density among birds, fish and mammals. Moreover, these structural variations could mean not only differences in the cellular physiology, but also in the patterns of development and maintenance of the retina in each species.

Neurochemical anatomy of the zebrafish retina as determined by immunocytochemistry

“…Compared with other species there is relatively very little information regarding the zebrafish retina. The distributions of GABA, GAD, glycine, GluR5-7 and PKC have been described (Sandell et al, 1994;Connaughton et al, 1999;Caminos et al, 2000;Nelson et al, 2001) as well as glutamine synthetase and carbonic anhydrase (Peterson et al, 2001). The purpose of this study was to provide an extensive description of the neurochemical anatomy of the zebrafish retina by light microscopic immunocytochemistry.…”

Age-related decrease in rod bipolar cell density of the human retina: an immunohistochemical study

“…As shown in other vertebrates (Dacheux and Raviola 1986;Saito 1987;Strettoi et al 1990;, these are considered to be physiological ON-type cells. Immunohistochemically, they are identifi ed by their selective expression of protein kinase C-α (Negishi et al 1988;Graeferath et al 1990;Grünert and Martin 1991;Zhang and Yeh 1991;Young and Vaney 1991;Martin and Grünert 1992;Kolb et al 1993;Caminos et al 2000;Haverkamp et al 2003). All the rod bipolar cells are labelled by antibodies to protein kinase C-α (Graeferath et al 1990) in the rat retina, and throughout the retina in humans (Kolb et al 1993).…”

An Immunohistochemical Study of Protein Kinase C in the Bovine Retina

“…PKC is involved in both physiological and pathophysiological processes of the retina and plays an important role in signal transduction [7,8]. Although comparative studies of PKC in the retina have been widely performed in fish, chicken, and rodents [1,3], the cellular localization of PKC isozymes in the retina of domestic animals such as cattle has remained elusive.…”