An Indiana University researcher has received a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Eye Institute to advance basic research on the eye with applications to blindness caused by genetic disorders and aging.
The award was given to Andrew Zelhof, an associate professor of biology, who will reportedly use the funds to investigate the effect of both congenital birth defects and age on the eye using a species of fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model species. According to Zelhof, research on these particular species of fruit fly can provide important new insights into human eyes due to the highly conserved nature of these mechanisms in flies and humans, which possess approximately 70 percent of the same genes.
Zelhof's previous research has shown that the protein known as prominin-1 plays a role in the development of fruit fly photoreceptors, which could lead to applications for the treatment of prominin-induced human retinal degeneration as well as autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa. The new research will reportedly develop a more robust model of the mechanisms that drive both this retinal degeneration and synaptogenesis.
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Source: Indiana University