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

The vertebrate lens is a transparent, avascular structure essential for focusing light onto the retina. Damage or loss of the lens, as seen in cataracts or injury, results in significant visual impairment (REF). In humans, lens regeneration is extremely limited, requiring surgical intervention. However, certain amphibians, including Pleurodeles waltl, possess the remarkable ability to regenerate a fully functional lens following removal.

P. waltl serves as an ideal model organism for studying regeneration due to its robust capacity for tissue regeneration (Elewa et al., 2017). Following lentectomy, lens regeneration occurs specifically from the dorsal iris pigment epithelial cells (iPECs) as they re-enter the cell cycle at 4 days post-lentectomy (dpl), which transdifferentiate into lens cells. In contrast, ventral iPECs fail to initiate this regenerative process despite being anatomically similar and phenotypically identical.

A key question in regenerative biology is why dorsal iPECs are competent for regeneration while ventral iPECs are not. This asymmetry suggests the presence of molecular pathways that either promote regeneration dorsally or inhibit it ventrally. Understanding these differences is critical for identifying mechanisms that could potentially unlock regenerative capacity in otherwise non-regenerative tissues.

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