Salvaging Ruins: Reverting Blind Retinas into Functional Visual Sensors
| Autor: | Marion Mutter, Natalia Swietek, Thomas Münch |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Retinal degeneration
Retina genetic structures biology business.industry Channelrhodopsin Retinal Optogenetics medicine.disease eye diseases Photoreceptor cell chemistry.chemical_compound medicine.anatomical_structure chemistry Rhodopsin Retinitis pigmentosa medicine biology.protein business Neuroscience |
| Zdroj: | Methods in Molecular Biology ISBN: 9781493904693 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/978-1-4939-0470-9_10 |
| Popis: | Blindness is one of the most devastating conditions affecting the quality of life. Hereditary degenerative diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa, are characterized by the progressive loss of photoreceptors, leading to complete blindness. No treatment is known, the current state-of-the-art of restoring vision are implanted electrode arrays. As a recently discovered alternative, optical neuromodulators, such as channelrhodopsin, allow new strategies for treating these diseases by imparting light-sensitivity onto the remaining retinal neurons after photoreceptor cell death. Retinal degeneration is a heterogeneous set of diseases with diverse secondary effects on the retinal circuitry. Successful treatment strategies have to take into account this diversity, as only the existing retinal hardware can serve as substrate for optogenetic intervention. The goal is to salvage the retinal ruins and to revert the leftover tissue into a functional visual sensor that operates as optimally as possible. Here, we discuss three different successful approaches that have been applied to degenerated mouse retina. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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