Figure 6: Material transfer is specific to photoreceptor precursors and does not result from uptake of free proteins from environment.

(a–d), confocal projection images of adult retinal sections taken at 48 h, 1 week, 2weeks and 6 weeks post-injection of rEGFP and stained with anti-GFP antibody (green). Insert, Very few GFP⁺ cells were seen; those that were had normal rod photoreceptor morphology. (e,f) Scatter plots showing the mean (±s.d.) number of GFP⁺ cells within the host ONL at each time point in stained and unstained serial sections. (g), confocal projection images of retinal sections taken at 6 weeks post-injection of GFP⁺ fibroblasts. (h), scatter plot showing the number of GFP⁺ cells within the host ONL. (i), confocal projection images of retinal section taken at 6 weeks post-injection of E11.5 GFP⁺ retinal progenitor cells (RPCs). (j), scatter plot showing the number of GFP⁺ cells within the host ONL. For panels (a)-(d) and (g),(h), images from top to bottom show individual and/or combined channels for the same region of interest. Scale bars 50 μm.