Effect of visual experience on gene expression during the development of stimulus specificity in cat brain

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Abstract

The eyelids of newborn kittens were bilaterally sutured in an experiment to test the effect of patterned visual experience on genetic transcription. A comparison was made of total RNA complexity between brain RNAs from kittens with sutured eyelids and those of their unsutured littermates. The complexity of visual cortex RNA from normally sighted animals was greater than that of lid-sutured animals. In contrast, RNAs from total nonvisual cortices of sutured and unsutured kittens contained indistinguishable RNA sequence complexities, as did RNAs from subcortical structures. Thus, the normal maturation of visual cortex which is dependent on visual experience appears to involve a greater amount of genetic expression than occurs in the absence of visual experience.

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