Gene therapy of the human retina levels of light. What follows often is the death of cone cells, responsible for color vision and acuity, at light levels present during the day. Loss of cones leads to full blindness as early as five years old, but may not onset until many years later. There have been multiple hypotheses about how the lack of rod cells can lead to the death of cone cells. Pinpointing a mechanism for RP is difficult because there are more than 39 genetic loci and genes correlated with this disease. In an effort to find the cause of RP, there have been different
Retina is key to lessening the sum of messages sent to the higher regions of the brain. In some lower vertebrates (e.g. the pigeon), there is a "centrifugal" control of messages – that is, one layer can control another, or higher regions of the brain can drive the retinal nerve cells, but in primates this does not occur. Using optical coherence tomography (OCT) there are 18 layers that can be identified in the retina. The layers and anatomical correlation are as follows: From innermost to outermost, the layers identifiable by OCT are as follows: Retinal development begins with the establishment of