Waves of Excitement

Spontaneous excitability is a well known feature of developing vertebrate nervous systems, but the fine details of its effects are less established. This study, focussing on mouse retina development after birth, finds precisely timed waves of electrical activity sweeping across the retinal ganglion cell (RGC) layer that influence concomitant processes like neuron growth, programmed cell death, synapse and blood vessel formation. A pattern ensues of synchronised expansion of multiple developmental processes outwardly from the centre, which is regulated by a feedback loop involving a newly-discovered population of dying RGC dubbed auto-fluorescent cluster complexes

Read the published research article here

Written by Lindsey Goff

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Image from work by Michael A Savage and colleagues
• Biosciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife (reviewed preprint), July 2026