The work reads interesting - I suggest that the authors consider adding the following citation when applying spatial transcriptomics (MERFISH) to study RGC neurodegeneration using whole-mount preparation (PMID: 40840447). It would also be interesting to compare the technical notes across the two platforms (and/or Xenium) in your discussion. The field looks forward to seeing such notes, especially as seq-FISH is becoming more accessible to general users through commercialization.

Dear authors, congratulations on the beautiful work. - This is clearly a very important work to define the ON-DSGC subtype and investigate the developmental regulation of the subtype using genetic and functional approaches. I have a minor critique - For Figure 6, I suggest that your revised/peer-reviewed paper should cite the original publication (PMID: 35524141) in both text/method on mWGA-mCherry as (mWmC+) instead of saying a generic (WGA+), as your staining was RFP (the mWmC fusion ) but not WGA-protein. The fusion protein (but not the original plant lectin from Yoshihara 1999) made visualization robust and quantifiable.