Diana Mitchell and the GRC published in Scientific Reports
March 28, 2019Assistant Professor Diana Mitchell, in collaboration with Professor Deb Stenkamp of the Dept. of Biological Sciences and the IBEST GRC, recently published a paper in the Scientific Reports - Nature journal titled: “Regeneration associated transcriptional signature of retinal microglia and macrophages.†Funding for this work was provided by Idaho INBRE through a Technology Access Grant awarded to Dr. Mitchell and an NIH R21 awarded to Dr. Stenkamp. Their research seeks to understand the remarkable capacity in which zebrafish can regenerate retinal neurons, in this case with a focus on immune cell populations present during retinal repair. This manuscript is the first work of its kind to use RNA sequencing to probe macrophage populations isolated from tissue in a regenerative state. This work has increased the knowledge of macrophage functions during zebrafish retinal regeneration and provides a wealth of candidate pathways towards understanding macrophage functions in this context.