Dying For Vision

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Salil Lachke / Biological Sciences / Faculty
Dying For Vision
Confocal Microscopy – Landscape
The lens of the mammalian eye, similar to the lens of a camera, is transparent so as to focus light on the sensor of the eye, namely the retina. For the lens to become transparent, the bulk of its cellular tissue has to lose all its nuclei and organelles. Throughout the life of the animal, a monolayer of cells in the front (pink) of the lens will divide (asterisks indicate specific cells condensing their chromosomes for division) at a slow but steady pace and get displaced to its “equator” region where they begin a specialized cellular program to degrade their nuclei. The nuclei in the bottom (blue) don’t know it yet, but they are marked for death. Defect in this program results in newborns getting an eye disease called cataract.

Skills

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January 10, 2019