All Eyes

Take an orange, slice its surface, pull it open and squash it flat. Now, could you easily figure out exactly how its insides fit together? Imagine the same problem with the far more complex mammalian eye. When studying eye diseases using traditional microscopy, specimen eyes must be peeled open and flattened, distorting the tissue. Researchers now demonstrate the power of light-sheet fluorescent microscopy (LSFM) for 3D live-imaging whole, spherical mouse eyes. In a mouse model of eye disease, oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR), LSFM revealed new features previously unappreciated using traditional microscopy. Abnormal blood vessels called tufts, which invade the retina, were found to be knotted. This was confirmed using micro-CT of fixed — and therefore non-living — OIR mouse retina (pictured, right), with lumps of knotted vessels observed pushing through compared to normal mouse retina (left). LSFM could, therefore, reveal new insights in the study of many different eye diseases.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Claudia Prahst and colleagues
• Center for Vascular Biology Research and Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA and Informatics, The Francis Crick Institute, Kings College London, London, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, February 2020