Effect of visual experience on tubulin synthesis during a critical period of visual cortex development in the hooded rat.

1. In some species, restriction of visual experience in early life may affect normal functional development of visual cortical cells. The purpose of the present study was to determine if visual deprivation during post-natal development in the hooded rat also affects the production in brain cells of certain molecular components such as tubulin, that are needed for growth and maintenance of synapses and neurites. 2. Norwegian black hooded rats were reared under a variety of conditions of visual deprivation. At various stages of development the animals were killed and the rate of synthesis of tubulin in visual and motor cortex determined. Tritiated colchicine was used to assay tubulin and L-[14C]leucine injected into the brain ventricles 2 hr before death was used to measure rate of tubulin synthesis. 3. In rats reared in normal light there is a marked elevation in visual cortex tubulin synthesis that spans the period from eye-opening (13 days) until approximately 35 days. This elevation in tubulin synthesis is absent in animals reared in darkness from birth or deprived of pattern vision by eyelid suture. Also the effect of visual deprivation on tubulin synthesis was specifically confined to visual cortex and was not found for the motor cortex. Similarly, the incorporation of L-[14C]leucine into total protein in visual cortex was unaffected by dark rearing. Hence the stimulation of tubulin synthesis by visual experience in rat visual cortex is not attributable to a general non-specific stimulation of protein synthesis. 4. Rats that were dark-reared from birth and then exposed to a lighted environment for 24 hr during a certain critical period that extends from eye-opening (13 days) until approximately 35 days, displayed a significant increase in visual cortex tubulin rats that were brought into the light later than 35 days showed no significant increase in tubulin synthesis when compared with their continuously dark-rearer controls. 5. It is suggested that the number of synapses and cytoplasmic processes that a developing cell can maintain depends on the size of the tubulin pool available to that cell. Tubulin in brain only has a half-life of about 4 days, so when the level of tubulin drops this could result in competition between different synapses for the limited supply of tubulin needed for their maintenance, a factor which may contribute to the structural plasticity of the visual cortex during the critical period.