Investigating the role of retinal Müller cells with approaches in genetics and cell biology.

Müller cells are major macroglia and play many essential roles as a supporting cell in the retina. As Müller cells only constitute a small portion of retinal cells, investigating the role of Müller glia in retinal biology and diseases is particularly challenging. To overcome this problem, we first generated a Cre/lox-based conditional gene targeting system that permits the genetic manipulation and functional dissection of gene of interests in Müller cells. To investigate diabetes-induced alteration of Müller cells, we recently adopted methods to analyze Müller cells survival/death in vitro and in vivo. We also used normal and genetically altered primary cell cultures to reveal the mechanistic insights for Müller cells in biological and disease processes. In this article, we will discuss the applications and limitations of these methodologies, which may be useful for research in retinal Müller cell biology and pathophysiology.