Simple Sugars Inhibit Rod Outer Segment Disc Shedding by the Frog Retina

To investigate the hypothesis that sugar molecules might act as markers for ROS disc phagocytosis, frog eyecups were incubated in a normally permissive medium for ROS disc shedding with and without added simple sugars. L-fucose, alpha-methyl-D-mannopyranoside and D-mannose all significantly reduced the numbers of packets of ROS discs found in the retinal pigment epithelium. D-fucose, L-mannose, D-fructose, D-galactose, D-glucose and sucrose were without significant effect at the same concentration. Ultrastructural examination of the retinas indicates that the sugars were effective on the disc shedding process rather than on phagocytosis of already shed disc packets.