The latest edition of the journal Nature has published a paper that emphasizes the importance of light exposure during pregnancy for normal eye development in the baby. This research was conducted by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. The finding is particularly useful in understanding ocular diseases caused due to vascular disorders especially ones like retinopathy of premature infants which can lead to blindness.
The study was set up with the primary objective of identifying the light-response pathway which controls retinal neurons. Richard Lang, the principal investigator of the project along with fellow scientist David Copenhagen set up the initial experiments on laboratory mice. For this, the mice were divided into 2 groups – one where the mice were kept in the dark, and the other where the mice were allowed exposure to normal light. They introduced a marker in the ‘opsin’ gene so that the pathway and its effect could be identified. Using these molecular tools, the scientists deciphered the functions of the light response pathway and how it was affecting the infants leading to retinopathy and other vascular diseases of the eye in them.
Using these mouse models the researchers demonstrated that:
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