• DVM360_Conference_Charlotte,NC_banner
  • ACVCACVC
  • DVM 360
  • Fetch DVM 360Fetch DVM 360
DVM 360
dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care
dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care
By Role
AssociatesOwnersPractice ManagerStudentsTechnicians
Subscriptions
dvm360 Newsletterdvm360 Magazine
News
All News
Association
Breaking News
Conference Coverage
Education
Equine
FDA
Law & Ethics
Market Trends
Medical
Politics
Products
Recalls
Regulatory
Digital Media
dvm360 LIVE!™
Expert Interviews
The Vet Blast Podcast
Medical World News
Pet Connections
The Dilemma Live
Vet Perspectives™
Weekly Newscast
dvm360 Insights™
Publications
All Publications
dvm360
Firstline
Supplements
Vetted
Clinical
All Clinical
Anesthesia
Animal Welfare
Behavior
Cardiology
CBD in Pets
Dentistry
Dermatology
Diabetes
Emergency & Critical Care
Endocrinology
Equine Medicine
Exotic Animal Medicine
Feline Medicine
Gastroenterology
Imaging
Infectious Diseases
Integrative Medicine
Nutrition
Oncology
Ophthalmology
Orthopedics
Pain Management
Parasitology
Pharmacy
Surgery
Toxicology
Urology & Nephrology
Virtual Care
Business
All Business
Business & Personal Finance
Hospital Design
Personnel Management
Practice Finances
Practice Operations
Wellbeing & Lifestyle
Continuing Education
Conferences
Conference Listing
Conference Proceedings
Resources
CBD in Pets
CE Requirements by State
Contests
Veterinary Heroes
Partners
Spotlight Series
Team Meeting in a Box
Toolkit
Top Recommended Veterinary Products
Vet to Vet
  • Contact Us
  • Fetch DVM360 Conference
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • About Us

© 2023 MJH Life Sciences and dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care. All rights reserved.

Advertisement
By Role
  • Associates
  • Owners
  • Practice Manager
  • Students
  • Technicians
Subscriptions
  • dvm360 Newsletter
  • dvm360 Magazine
  • Contact Us
  • Fetch DVM360 Conference
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • About Us
  • MJHLS Brand Logo

© 2023 MJH Life Sciences™ and dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care. All rights reserved.

Gene discovery could lead to better understanding of how retinal cells regenerate

December 1, 2011

National Report - Veterinarians and medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University have identified a gene that causes a blindness-inducing disease in dogs.

NATIONAL REPORT — Veterinarians and medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University have identified a gene that causes a blindness-inducing disease in dogs.

The discovery may help scientists learn new information about how retinal cells can be regenerated.

Drs. Gustavo D. Aguirre, William A. Beltran, Agnes I. Berta and Sem Genini of Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, and Kathleen Boesze-Battaglia of the Penn School of Dental Medicine collaborated on the study with researchers from Cornell, the National Eye Institute and the Semmelweis University of Medicine in Hungary. The study was published in the online journal PLOS One.

Advertisement

Aguirre began studying rod dysplasia at Penn Vet in the late 1960s. The disease causes blindness in the Norwegian Elkhound. This discovery led Aguirre and his colleagues to look for other breeds suffering from the same condition. A similar, but different, disease was discovered called early retinal degeneration (ERD) that resulted in blindness in a shorter period of time. Affected dogs became blind within a year of birth, instead of between two and four years. Researchers began to list genes that could be responsible for ERD, but it was only recently that they made a discovery in an unlikely place in the dog's genome.

"After developing the dog genetic map in the late 1990s and then mapping the disease to a known region of the genome ... we had to prioritize gene candidates by their locations and their functions," Aguirre explains. "This gene was at the bottom of our list because it's normally only found in the brain and was not related to any known vision defect. But, lo and behold, it's actually a very important gene to the retina."

Identifying the gene is a first step to explaining the progression of ERD. Microscopic analyses of retinas from afflicted dogs showed that vision-related cells die at an accelerated rate during this period, but are replaced just as quickly. The cell death and compensatory formation of new ones is a totally unexpected finding in diseases of the retina.

Although the exact function of the gene has not been identified, it is believed to be involved in the control of the cell-division cycle. Normally, photoreceptor cells in the retina stop dividing shortly after birth. These hybrid photoreceptors, however, continue to divide during ERD's plateau period. Understanding what keeps those cells dividing may hold the key for therapies that can hold off the onset of blindness, or even reverse it, Penn says.

"These cells are abnormal," Aguirre explains. "Normally, there is no good evidence of large amounts of new cells being created in the retina or the central nervous system. We can better understand the way that the photoreceptor cells divide by studying this disease and potentially manipulate the gene in such a way that you could get the division component without the abnormal component."

The research was funded by the National Eye Institute, the National Institutes of Health, a Fulbright Educational Exchange Program Fellowship, the Foundation Fighting Blindness Center, the Van Sloun Fund for Canine Genetic Research, Hope for Vision, The ONCE International Prize for R&D in Biomedicine and New Technologies for the Blind.

Related Content:

MedicalOphthalmology
Tips and tricks for diagnosing canine osteoarthritis early
Tips and tricks for diagnosing canine osteoarthritis early
Performing surgery on dogs with GDV
Performing surgery on dogs with GDV
Not-so-ordinary ER cases you should know
Not-so-ordinary ER cases you should know

Advertisement

Latest News

Thriving when life is hard

Hospital design expert shares his favorite design element

Updated EquiTrace app integrates wth HISA Portal

San Francisco SPCA receives $100k grant from San Francisco Foundation

View More Latest News
Advertisement