The lens is a useful tissue to study development because it is very simple, and self-containing. The lens is made of only two cell types; epithelial cells, and fiber cells. The epithelial cells are cuboidal and aligned in a single row along the anterior edge of the lens and they mature into the long transparent fiber cells that make up a bulk of the lens. The lens gets all of its nutrients by diffusion from the vitreous humor that surrounds it making it self-containing. To study this system, we use an explanting system where the lens is removed from the the eye and the fiber cells are discarded leaving only the layer of epithelial cells. We then pin this tissue to a dish and treat it with different combinations of media and time to stimulate different responses. The goal of this study was to analyze gene expression changes happening in the explants as they developed. Specifically, I wanted determine if doing longer explants was useful for studying lens development and explore the immune response that was identified in explants recently for its role in regulating lens development. I did this by conducting bioinformatics analysis on RNA-sequencing data between different treatments to analyze developmental progression. This research has implications in diseases of the lens such as cataracts and anterior segment dysgenesis. Optimizing the explanting system and identifying regulatory pathways in lens development will lead to improvements in treatments for these diseases.
Author(s): Anthony Petulla, Biology and Data Science and Statistics Major
Advisor(s): Michael Robinson, Department of Biology
Anil Upreti, Department of Biology
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