Increasing Ca2+ in photoreceptor mitochondria alters metabolites, accelerates photoresponse recovery, and reveals adaptations to mitochondrial stress.

Photoreceptors are specialized neurons that rely on Ca2+ to regulate phototransduction and neurotransmission. Photoreceptor dysfunction and degeneration occur when intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis is disrupted. Ca2+ homeostasis is maintained partly by mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake through the mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU), which can influence cytosolic Ca2+ signals, stimulate energy production, and trigger apoptosis. Here we discovered that zebrafish cone photoreceptors express unusually low levels of MCU. We expected that this would be important to prevent mitochondrial Ca2+ overload and consequent cone degeneration. To test this hypothesis, we generated a cone-specific model of MCU overexpression. Surprisingly, we found that cones tolerate MCU overexpression, surviving elevated mitochondrial Ca2+ and disruptions to mitochondrial ultrastructure until late adulthood. We exploited the survival of MCU overexpressing cones to additionally demonstrate that mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake alters the distributions of citric acid cycle intermediates and accelerates recovery kinetics of the cone response to light. Cones adapt to mitochondrial Ca2+ stress by decreasing MICU3, an enhancer of MCU-mediated Ca2+ uptake, and selectively transporting damaged mitochondria away from the ellipsoid toward the synapse. Our findings demonstrate how mitochondrial Ca2+ can influence physiological and metabolic processes in cones and highlight the remarkable ability of cone photoreceptors to adapt to mitochondrial stress.