Thematic symposia (7)
Several invertebrate systems have been developed to study the eye and eye disease (Drosophila, Planaria, Platynereis, and most recently, the cubozoan jellyfish Tripedalia), but a molluscan model is conspicuously absent. This is surprising as mollusc systems offer many advantages and opportunities to study basic visual processes that may be altered in the disease state, physiology of vision, development of the visual system, and evolution. As an example, recent work shows that cytoskeletal organization is regulated by the state of light and dark adaptation in cephalopods. We also know that some disease states in the retina affect the cytoskeleton. Studies on cephalopod photoreceptors could lead to a better understanding of the role of the cytoskeleton in photoreceptors and provide clues that link its organization to retinal disease. To take advantage and increase the use of molluscan eye models, there is a need to increase interactions between eye researchers and malacologists, who study the organism as a whole. Malacologists provide a detailed knowledge of the organism's ecology/habitat/niche that, when combined with expertise on the development and physiology of the eye, have the potential to re-direct research to more fruitful questions and model systems. At present, these two groups of researchers are largely unaware of the other's body of work as they do not attend the same meetings or publish in the same journals. This symposium will open a dialog between these fields, to invigorate and advance eye research into new frontiers by using molluscan eyes as a model system to study eye development and disease.
Contact:
Dr. Jeanne Serb, Dept. Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, 245 Bessey, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
Dr. Laura Robles, California State University, Dominquez Hills, 1000 E. Victoria Street, Carson, CA 90747, USA
