| Anatomical and physiological studies of visual system development have revealed much about how activity drives the final patterning of neuronal connections. However, at the cellular level, there is little known about mechanisms underlying this activity-evoked synaptic remodeling. Recent progress in mouse genetic manipulation methodologies argues that many questions regarding the cellular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity can now be approached in rodents using molecular tools. The CPG pool represents a source of genes that may be relevant to many activity-dependent phenomena. Screens of the CPG pool have identified a subset that is postnatally expressed in the developing cortex and activated by light in the adult cortex, suggesting they may be involved in activity-dependent aspects of visual system development as well as every day efficient function. We are using CPGs as molecular tools to probe activity-dependent plasticity in the visual system (Lee and Nedivi, 2002). These experiments use gene expression to assay the effects of visual manipulations classically assayed by electrophysiological or anatomical techniques. |
