Theses and Dissertations Collection

The mammalian retina does not possess the capacity of intrinsic generation of functional replacement upon the loss of retinal neurons, and functional replacement of these cells in human patients is not medically feasible at present. Identification of regulatory targets controlling retinal neurogenesis and regeneration in zebrafish can potentially provide new directions to treat retinal pathologies as well as to induce potential retinal regeneration in humans. Fortunately, next-generation sequencing (NGS) provides powerful systems-based analysis of cellular pathways, and has been used to analyze these regulatory targets in this study. The goals of this dissertation are to develop a methodology of isolating photoreceptors of different subtypes, to analyze NGS-derived photoreceptor transcriptome profiling (RNA-seq), and to study functions of selected transcripts in zebrafish photoreceptor development and maintenance.