Microenvironmental regulation of visual pigment expression in the chick retina.

Visual pigment (VP) expression in the chick embryo retina was investigated in ovo, in dissociated and explant cultures, and in cDNAs from individual cells. While VP mRNA is not detectable by in situ hybridization until embryonic day (ED) 14-16 in ovo, analysis of VP expression by RT-PCR showed that VP messages are present in the retina as many as 7-10 days before they become detectable by in situ hybridization, and are also detected in other regions of the embryonic CNS. On the other hand, red opsin expression is markedly accelerated when cells are isolated from their intraocular microenvironment at ED 6, and placed in pigment epithelium-free dissociated or explant cultures. This acceleration occurs regardless of cell density, birth date, or serum presence in the medium, suggesting that many photoreceptors are already programmed to express red opsin on or before ED 6, and that microenvironmental inhibitory factors prevent implementation of this program until ED 14 in ovo. The selectivity of this phenomenon is suggested by the finding that other VPs are not observed by in situ hybridization in ED 6 cultures, although they are detectable in cultures of older retinas. Taken together, these findings suggest that red opsin expression may be constitutive for many developing photoreceptor cells in the chick.

Lipid-mediated gene transfection into chick embryo retinal cells in ovo and in vitro.

Several lipofection reagents were tested on chick embryo retinal cultures using green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a reporter gene; best results were obtained with the GenePORTER (GP) reagent, which yielded approximately 4.4% of the cells with intense GFP fluorescence. Cell survival and structural differentiation appeared normal, but one of the immunocytochemical markers studied (visinin) was less frequently observed in GP-treated cultures. When similar plasmid-GP mixtures were injected into chick embryo eyes in ovo, bright GFP-fluorescent cells were observed in different retinal layers, without detectable detrimental effects on retinal morphology. Particularly extensive reporter gene expression was obtained upon intraocular injection of GP plus naked DNA from a RCAS retrovirus, which resulted in the development of abundant radial columns of alkaline phosphatase-positive cells, separated by columns of negative cells. We conclude that lipid-based transfection offers a quick, simple and fairly innocuous means for gene delivery into proliferating and postmitotic retinal cells, in vitro as well as in the developing eye in ovo, and that transfection of naked retroviral DNA can lead to extensive expression of foreign genes by retinal cells, bypassing the time-consuming steps required for the generation of high-titer virion stocks.