Identification Of The Mutant Gene Responsible For The CSNB Rat

Retina plays a very important role in the formation, transmission and primary reorganization of visual signal, whose pathological changes could severely influence the visual function of the patients and cause blindness or low vision. Animals with various inherited retinal diseases provide useful models to study the pathogenesis and possible treatment of the disease, as well as important methods to investigate the stucture, activity and function of the retina. Such animal models founded by our country have not been reported.In 2003, a kind of rat whose phenotype resembled the characteristics of human Congenital Stationary Night Blindness (CSNB) patient was reported by our department. Later, another kind of rat resembling the features of human Retinal Cone Dysfunction (RCD) patient was found in our department. Both kinds of rats were inbred to construct the new inbred strains from Sprague-Dawley outbred strain background.In the first section, conventional visual electrophysiology was observed in CSNB and RCD rat. Dark-adapted multifocal electroretinogram (mfERG) and light-adapted mfERG were recorded from CSNB rat. Dark-adapted...