Retinal Pigment Epithelium Cultures

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.  After growing into a sheet, Peter fixed and Vibratome sectioned these cells followed by immunostaining with Beta catenin (red) and DAPI (blue) before 3D reconstruction using ZEN software.  The interesting thing is that Peter has a protocol for making RPE cells in culture resemble mature, adult RPE cells which is quite a feat.  I’d love to find out just how similar they are to the real McCoy.

Peter as a post-doc is already one of the most accomplished scientists I know in RPE cell biology.  Peter was heavily recruited by a number of labs for his current post-doc after leaving the Fuhrmann laboratory and we were sorry to see him leave the Moran Eye Center.  I’d also like to note that Peter helped me in a previous project by rapidly working through an early investigation on the feasibility of a particular study after the first person assigned to the project did not complete the work.  This conclusion enabled the very difficult decision to ironically *not* apply for a grant based on an incorrect line of reasoning and saved me potentially huge amounts of effort and time, something I am grateful for.  Next round is on me Peter…