Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of Photoreceptor Synapses in Developing, Degenerating and Regenerating Retinas

Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
Ryutaro AkibaMichiko Mandai

Abstract

Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of synapses is crucial to understand neural connectivity. This is particularly relevant now, in view of the recent advances in regenerative biology and medicine. There is an urgent need to evaluate synapses to access the extent and functionality of reconstructed neural network. Most of the currently used synapse evaluation methods provide only all-or-none assessments. However, very often synapses appear in a wide spectrum of transient states such as during synaptogenesis or neural degeneration. Robust evaluation of synapse quantity and quality is therefore highly sought after. In this paper we introduce QUANTOS, a new method that can evaluate the number, likelihood, and maturity of photoreceptor ribbon synapses based on graphical properties of immunohistochemistry images. QUANTOS is composed of ImageJ Fiji macros, and R scripts which are both open-source and free software. We used QUANTOS to evaluate synaptogenesis in developing and degenerating retinas, as well as de novo synaptogenesis of mouse iPSC-retinas after transplantation to a retinal degeneration mouse model. Our analysis shows that while mouse iPSC-retinas are largely incapable of forming synapses in vitro, they can form extens...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 27, 2021·Stem Cell Reports·Suguru YamasakiMichiko Mandai
May 18, 2021·Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology·Manuela VölknerMike O Karl
Nov 2, 2021·Translational Vision Science & Technology·Allison L Ludwig, David M Gamm

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
electron microscopy
transgenic

Software Mentioned

ImageJ Fiji
R Foundation for Statistical Computing
ImageJ Fiji Macros
QUANTOS
Rstan
ImageJ
R
pROC
Fiji
R scripts

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