Mentor: Katia Del Rio-Tsonis, Ph.D.

Today, 1 million Americans 40 years and older are blind, with another 39 million living with vision impairment. The main causes of age-related vision impairment are eye diseases such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, and cataracts (1). One of the main tissues damaged by these conditions is the retina, the part of the eye that turns visual stimuli into neural impulses to be sent to the brain and allow vision. Unfortunately, humans have limited ability to regenerate tissues and organs that have been damaged. Other vertebrates, like newts, have the miraculous ability to regenerate several parts of their body throughout their lifespan, including limbs, tail, brain, spinal cord, heart, retina, and lens (2-6). Studying the mechanisms by which newt retina regeneration occurs will provide us with knowledge that can lead to having the ability to induce regeneration of the retina in other animals, particularly humans.

In the Spanish newt, the mechanism of retina regeneration begins with the cells of the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) located in the most posterior part of the eye. This layer of cells dedifferentiates to become neural progenitor cells that proliferate and eventually reprogram into the several cell types present in the retina: ganglion, amacrine, horizontal, bipolar, muller glia, and photoreceptors, as well as a new RPE cells monolayer.

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