Like all tissues in the body, the eye needs a healthy blood supply to function properly. Poorly developed blood vessels can lead to visual impairment or even blindness. While many of the molecules involved in guiding the development of the intricate blood vessel architecture are known, only now are we learning how these molecules work and how they might affect sight. Reporting in the Oct. 16 issue of Cell, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine find that when some cells in the mouse retina are not properly fed by blood vessels, they can remain alive for many months and can later recover some or all of their normal function, suggesting that similar conditions in people may also be reversible. "This finding is intriguing," says Jeremy Nathans, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience and ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "It suggests that neurons in the retina can survive for an extended period of time even though they have been functionally silenced."
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