Tylor presented a talk entitled “Mislocalized rhodopsin is concentrated and released in microvesicles secreted from the photoreceptor inner segment” at the Southeastern Vision Research Conference hosted at Vanderbilt. This conference was a great opportunity to learn more about ongoing vision research in the area!

Chris is testing out the new Vibratome in the lab! This instrument is used to cut sections of retinal tissue to be imaged with either immunofluorescence microscopy or electron microscopy. Chris is an expert at fluorescence microscopy and is enjoying the high quality images that this approach can produce. See below for one example!

The lab has published a new paper in PNAS! This work, entitled “Contribution of intraflagellar transport to compartmentalization and maintenance of the photoreceptor cell“, identifies the existence of a sorting mechanism whereby mislocalized rhodopsin can be recruited to and concentrated in extracellular vesicles prior to their release, presumably to protect the cell from adverse effects of protein mislocalization. The study also found that reducing rhodopsin expression significantly delays photoreceptor degeneration in some models of inherited retinal disease associated with rhodopsin mislocalization, suggesting a therapeutic strategy to explore for these conditions.

Excited to announce that, as of August 1st, the Lewis Lab in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at UAB is officially open for business!