The Organization of the Retina and Visual System
A study out in today’s Science Magazine by Takashi Nagata, Mitsumasa Koyanagi, Hisao Tsukamoto, Shinjiro Saeki, Kunio Isono, Yoshinori Shichida, Fumio Tokunaga, Michiyo Kinoshita, Kentaro Arikawa and Akihisa Terakita proposes that jumping spiders at least, use image defocusing to provide depth perception. Jumping spiders (Salticidae) are the largest family of spiders and have perhaps the best visual acuity of the invertebrates.
Categories: Notable papers.
This paper from Toshihide Kurihara, Peter Westenskow, Tim Krohne, Edith Aguilar, Randy A. Johnson, and Marty Friedlander propose a model for the transition from embryonic to adult circulation in the eye using a combinatorial gene deletion approach with over expression assays, examining astrocyte-targeted deletion of von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor (Vhl), hypoxia-inducible factor-αs (Hif-αs), and VEGF on normal regression of hyaloid vessels which are transient fetal vessels in the eye that can be seen in the second and early third trimester of human pregnancy. Continued…
Categories: Notable papers.
This paper by Clairton F. de Souza, Michael Kalloniatis, Philip J. Polkinghorne, Charles N.J. McGhee, Monica L. Acosta examines glutamate receptors and their functional activation in the human retina.
Categories: Notable papers.
2011 was a big year for Webvision. We moved servers to a new MacPro, served up one million pages, underwent a major redesign in April by moving the database onto WordPress platform, and started the blog portion of Webvision in addition to the traditional chapter content that has made us so popular.
Categories: News.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you from all of us at Webvision. This image, a Christmas wreath created by Robert E. Marc is composed of 104 rod bipolar cell axonal fields from the world’s first complete connectome with synaptic level resolution. Each bipolar cell in this field has been annotated from ultrastructural data revealing its extent and connectivities to other cell classes. The rod bipolar cells have been rendered out in 3D and is viewed from the top, or photoreceptor side, looking down towards the ganglion cell layer.
Categories: Art of Vision, Connectomics, Events, Moran Eye Center, Moran Eye Center Research, News, Retinal circuitry.
Friend of Webvision, Peter Westenskow in the Friedlander Laboratory sent us this beautiful image of activated Müller glia in a stressed mouse eye. You can see the scar in the photoreceptor layer towards the top of the image. The mouse line is VLDLR -/-. These mice exhibit aberrant neovascular tufts that invade the ONL and eventually grow into the RPE cells. The red staining is pan-cadherin.
Categories: Art of Vision.
We just received program notice of the XVth International Symposium on Retinal Degeneration that will be held, July 16-20, 2012 Bad Gögging, Bavaria, Germany.
Categories: Meetings.
Because knowing where we have come from with respect to the evolution of vision is so important, this paper by John R. Paterson, Diego C. García-Bellido, Michael S. Y. Lee, Glenn A. Brock, James B. Jago and Gregory D. Edgecombe gets our nod for a notable paper. It does not hurt that I have a fascination with the evolution of vision as well. Its just unfortunate that our obsession, the retina is not preserved in the fossil record. Continued…
Categories: Notable papers.
Another amazing image sent to us by Gabriel Luna out of the Steve Fisher and Geoff Lewis’s retinal cell biology group at UC Santa Barbara Neuroscience Research Institute. This image is of the optic nerve head of a normal mouse retina displaying the “glial tubes” formed by the astrocytic network (anti-GFAP; red). Anti-GFP (green) and anti-Collagen IV (blue) which were used to determine numbers of astrocytes and relative locations in relation to blood vessels.
Categories: Art of Vision.
We here at Webvision are deliriously happy to report that our good friend and colleague, Bärbel Rohrer was just appointed the Stanley H. and Theodora L. Feldberg Chair in Ophthalmology at Medical University of South Carolina. Many congratulations to her and we’ll look forward to congratulating her in person when she comes to visit us to deliver a talk in March.
Friend of Webvision, Peter Westenskow in Marty Friedlander’s laboratory sent along this gorgeous image of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells differentiating from induced pluripotent stem cells. Continued…
Categories: Art of Vision.
Presented at the Society for Neuroscience meetings in Washington, D.C. by Felix Vazquez-Chona, William Drew Ferrell, Ed Levine, Bryan William Jones and Robert E. Marc. Full size poster can be seen here. Continued…
Categories: Moran Eye Center, Moran Eye Center Research.
This image is from a patient has a keratoprosthesis or artificial cornea. Photograph was made by James Gilman of the Moran Eye Center using a sclerotic scatter illumination with a Zeiss photo slitlamp and a Nikon D-1X camera.
Categories: Art of Vision, Grand Rounds.
This article by Josefin Snellman, Bhupesh Mehta, Norbert Babai, Theodore M Bartoletti, Wendy Akmentin, Adam Francis, Gary Matthews, Wallace Thoreson and David Zenisek examines the vesicular priming process at synaptic ribbons. Continued…
Categories: Notable papers.
Hereditary retinal dystrophies (retinitis pigmentosa, Leber congenital amaurosis, cone-rod dystrophies, macular degeneration) are characterized by loss of visual function, sometimes starting during early childhood, other times in late adulthood. About 30% of these dystrophies are inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion (RetNet), caused by gain-of-function mutant alleles which encode a malignant form of a normal protein. Continued…
Categories: Moran Eye Center, Moran Eye Center Research, Notable papers, Retinal Disease, Vision Rescue.
Webvision summarizes recent advances in knowledge and understanding of the visual system through dedicated chapters and evolving discussion to serve as a clearing house for all things related to retina and vision science.
Contact: webvision@hsc.utah.edu