2019 Seed Grant
Tiffany Schmidt, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
Women’s Council Seed Grant
One major hurdle to treating diseases affecting vision is a fundamental lack of understanding of how light signals sent from the retina influence our behavior and physiology. In the proposed work, we will develop a suite of genetic tools to label, manipulate, and ablate specific subsets of retinal neurons at specific times. These tools have the potential to expand our understanding of the basic functions and wiring of the visual system in health and how this signaling goes wrong in disease. Most importantly, these tools will be made available to the wider neuroscience community where they could aid in the understanding of how specific neuronal cell types contribute to neurodegenerative diseases, neurodevelopmental disorders, and mental health issues.
