Mouse models for cone degeneration

Abstract

Loss of cone vision has devastating effects on everyday life. Even though much effort has been made to understand cone physiology and pathophysiology, no successful therapies are available for patients suffering from cone disorders. As complex retinal interactions cannot be studied in vitro, utilization of different animal models is inevitable. Due to recent advances in transgenesis, mice became the most popular animal model to study human diseases, also in ophthalmology. While there are similarities in retinal anatomy and pathophysiology between mice and humans, there are also differences, most importantly the lack of a cone-rich macula in mice. Instead, cones in mice are rare and distributed over the whole retina, which makes the analysis of cone pathophysiology very difficult in these animals. This hindrance is one of the reasons why our understanding of rod pathophysiological processes is much more advanced. Recently, however, the sparseness of cones was overcome by the generation of the Nrl −/− mouse that expresses only cone photoreceptors in the retina. This paper will give a brief overview of some of the known mouse models to study cone degeneration and discuss the current knowledge gained from the analysis of these models.