In the eye, the function of same-type photoreceptors must be regionally adjusted to process a highly asymmetrical natural visual world. Here, we show that UV cones in the larval zebrafish area temporalis are specifically tuned for UV-bright prey capture in their upper frontal visual field, which may use the signal from a single cone at a time. For this, UV-photon detection probability is regionally boosted more than 10-fold. Next, in vivo two-photon imaging, transcriptomics, and computational modeling reveal that these cones use an elevated baseline of synaptic calcium to facilitate the encoding of bright objects, which in turn results from expressional tuning of phototransduction genes. Moreover, the light-driven synaptic calcium signal is regionally slowed by interactions with horizontal cells and later accentuated at the level of glutamate release driving retinal networks. These regional differences tally with variations between peripheral and foveal cones in primates and hint at a common mechanistic origin.

在眼睛中，同类型感光细胞的功能必须进行区域性调整，以处理高度不对称的自然视觉世界。在这里，我们表明，幼虫斑马鱼颞区的紫外线锥体专门针对其上额视野中的紫外线明亮的猎物捕获进行了调整，这可能一次使用来自单个锥体的信号。为此，紫外光子检测概率在区域内提高了 10 倍以上。接下来，体内双光子成像、转录组学和计算模型表明，这些视锥细胞使用突触钙的升高基线来促进明亮物体的编码，而这又是光转导基因表达调节的结果。此外，光驱动的突触钙信号由于与水平细胞的相互作用而局部减慢，随后在驱动视网膜网络的谷氨酸释放水平上增强。这些区域差异与灵长类动物的外周视锥细胞和中心凹视锥细胞之间的差异相一致，并暗示了共同的机制起源。