Department of Cell Biology, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA.
Section of Neurobiology of the Eye, Ophthalmic Research Institute, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; Myopia Research Group, Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), Basel, Switzerland.
Exp Eye Res. 2021 Aug;209:108693. doi: 10.1016/j.exer.2021.108693. Epub 2021 Jul 3.
Refractive eye development is a tightly coordinated developmental process. The general layout of the eye and its various components are established during embryonic development, which involves a complex cross-tissue signaling. The eye then undergoes a refinement process during the postnatal emmetropization process, which relies heavily on the integration of environmental and genetic factors and is controlled by an elaborate genetic network. This genetic network encodes a multilayered signaling cascade, which converts visual stimuli into molecular signals that guide the postnatal growth of the eye. The signaling cascade underlying refractive eye development spans across all ocular tissues and comprises multiple signaling pathways. Notably, tissue-tissue interaction plays a key role in both embryonic eye development and postnatal eye emmetropization. Recent advances in eye biometry, physiological optics and systems genetics of refractive error have significantly advanced our understanding of the biological processes involved in refractive eye development and provided a framework for the development of new treatment options for myopia. In this review, we summarize the recent data on the mechanisms and signaling pathways underlying refractive eye development and discuss new evidence suggesting a wide-spread signal integration across different tissues and ocular components involved in visually guided eye growth.
屈光性眼球发育是一个紧密协调的发育过程。眼球的总体布局及其各种组成部分在胚胎发育过程中就已确定，这涉及到复杂的跨组织信号传递。然后，眼球在出生后的正视化过程中经历一个精细化过程，这个过程严重依赖于环境和遗传因素的整合，并受精细的遗传网络控制。这个遗传网络编码了一个多层次的信号级联，将视觉刺激转化为分子信号，指导眼球的出生后生长。屈光性眼球发育的信号级联跨越所有眼部组织，并包含多个信号通路。值得注意的是，组织间的相互作用在胚胎眼球发育和出生后眼球正视化中都起着关键作用。眼生物测量学、生理光学和近视的系统遗传学的最新进展极大地促进了我们对屈光性眼球发育相关生物学过程的理解，并为近视的新治疗选择的开发提供了框架。在这篇综述中，我们总结了屈光性眼球发育的机制和信号通路的最新数据，并讨论了新的证据，表明在视觉引导的眼球生长所涉及的不同组织和眼部成分中存在广泛的信号整合。
