Modeling the ROS renewal during retinal detachment

William Ebo Annan

Clarkson University

"Modeling the ROS renewal during retinal detachment"

Vision play vital roles in the lives of every animal. Rods and cones are two primary photoreceptor cells in the eye responsible for converting light energy (photon) into electrical signal perceived by the brain to enable vision. To prevent accumulation of toxics caused by photo-oxidative compounds, the rod and cone cells undergo daily renewal through addition of new disks at the base of their outer segment and removal of older ones from the tip. The balance between these two processes help the cell to maintain constant or an equilibrium length necessary for optimal performance of these cells. Imbalance may lead to retinal disease such as retinitis pigmentosa, a form of inherited blinding disease caused by degeneration of rod cells followed by progressive lost of cone cells. Also, when the retina is detached from the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE), the rod and cone cells degenerate and if the retina is reattached on time, the cells are able to regenerate to restore vision. When the rod outer segment suffer from degeneration due to retinal detachment, at what point will regeneration be impossible? How does retinal detachment disrupt renewal process (addition of new disks and shedding)? What mechanism controls the renewal process? How can degenerating rod and cone cells be rescue? These are some of the questions we intend to quantitatively address using mathematical model and comparing the result to a date obtained from zebra-fish. We focused on rod cells because survival of cone cells depends on rod cells and also the disks in the rod outer segment are discrete except few newly formed disks at the base which are still connected to the cell membrane and to one another. This feature make rod cells easily trackable and obtaining experimental data quiet easier compare to cone cells.

---