SemaA2 and PlexA2 protein play important role in the process of retina function

How do our eyes interpret the world around us to find moving objects?

Scientists who study eyes of mammals don't know too much about the molecular clues which are used to probe neural circuits of movements. But through use of recombinant human proteins, they know that SACs' astrocytes located in the photosensitive layer (or retina) of eyes is within a related to this.

SACs can detect movement by making reaction to bright and dark light. They will then communicate with other nerve cells despite that their communication modes in SAC cells are different in the condition of "light" and "dark". How do the same SAC cell types obtain these opposite functions is still a mystery.

Now, scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are focusing more on understanding how neural circuits in the eyes interpret the light pattern to permit detection of movement. They focus on a pair of retina proteins called SemaA2 and PlexA2.

In this study, the scientists designed the retina of mice to make it lack for one or two such proteins and observed how this would affect the function of SAC cells. Each time, SAC would change cell reactivity. Mouse retina containing mutant SACs showed poor performance in reactive test. It is vital that cutting expression of SemaA2 can help to create two different SAC cell groups (light and dark) which have opposite structures and functions.

This finding suggests that SemaA2 and PlexA2 can collaborate to make mammal retina grow healthily and function well. Flarebio offers recombinant proteins of good quality such as recombinant Cdh8 at competitive prices.