UCLA

Humans rely heavily on vision to navigate and perform complex tasks, making it a crucial sensory modality. However, the mechanisms underlying the emergence of this modality are not yet fully understood. Thus, understanding the origins of the visual system is a critical goal of neuroscience, as it can help define poorly understood neural circuitry. This project proposes a descriptive investigation to determine the molecular and evolutionary underpinnings of vision formation, specifically focusing on cell-type mapping and region-specific gene expression in basal vertebrate lamprey species. By localizing key regulatory genes and identifying the cell types of our vertebrate ancestors, we can elucidate the developmental processes and functional mechanisms of vision, ultimately providing an evolutionary roadmap of retinal vision. This investigation significantly enhances the existing cellular taxonomy of retinal formation and reveals components of visual circuits that were prevalent even in the most primitive vertebrates.