Discovery of an essential role for light in the organization of retinal cells

Brand new work from the laboratory of Michel Cayouette, Director of the Cellular Neurobiology Research Unit at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, published in November in the scientific journal Developmental Cell, reveals for the first time that photoreceptor cells in the mammalian retina exhibit planar polarity, meaning that their light-sensitive cilia orient themselves in a coordinated manner in the plane of the tissue. What’s more, the scientists were able to establish through this work that this polarity is induced by light during a critical period of development, representing a novel mechanism for cellular organization within an animal organism.

Light: from visual stimulus to vision optimization

This discovery, led by Michael Housset, a researcher in in the Cayouette laboratory, in collaboration with Dominic Filion of IRCM’s Microscopy and Imaging platform, is crucial because it demonstrates that light not only serves as a visual stimulus, but also plays a role in the spatial organization of light-sensitive cells in the retina as their visual function begins to take shape. This advance alters our understanding of the mechanisms controlling retinal development and vision optimization, and opens up new perspectives on the potential role of light in the development of other tissues and organs. This polarity could also have implications for retinal-related pathologies, notably in the context of aging or degenerative diseases.