1] Department of Physics, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel [2] Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Ruth & Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Rappaport Institute, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 31096, Israel [3].
1] Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Ruth & Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Rappaport Institute, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 31096, Israel [2].
Nat Commun. 2014 Jul 8;5:4319. doi: 10.1038/ncomms5319.
Vision starts with the absorption of light by the retinal photoreceptors-cones and rods. However, due to the 'inverted' structure of the retina, the incident light must propagate through reflecting and scattering cellular layers before reaching the photoreceptors. It has been recently suggested that Müller cells function as optical fibres in the retina, transferring light illuminating the retinal surface onto the cone photoreceptors. Here we show that Müller cells are wavelength-dependent wave-guides, concentrating the green-red part of the visible spectrum onto cones and allowing the blue-purple part to leak onto nearby rods. This phenomenon is observed in the isolated retina and explained by a computational model, for the guinea pig and the human parafoveal retina. Therefore, light propagation by Müller cells through the retina can be considered as an integral part of the first step in the visual process, increasing photon absorption by cones while minimally affecting rod-mediated vision.
视觉始于视网膜光感受器——视锥细胞和视杆细胞对光的吸收。然而，由于视网膜的“倒置”结构，入射光必须在到达光感受器之前穿过反射和散射的细胞层。最近有人提出，Müller 细胞在视网膜中充当光纤，将照亮视网膜表面的光转移到视锥细胞上。在这里，我们表明 Müller 细胞是波长相关的波导，将可见光谱的绿光-红光部分集中到视锥细胞上，并允许蓝-紫光部分泄漏到附近的视杆细胞上。这种现象在离体视网膜中观察到，并通过豚鼠和人周边部视网膜的计算模型得到了解释。因此，Müller 细胞通过视网膜的光传播可以被视为视觉过程第一步的一个组成部分，增加了视锥细胞对光子的吸收，同时对杆状细胞介导的视觉的影响最小。
