Roaming RGCs

Over half of your brain is involved in processing what you see. How does that visual information reach your brain? Via retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). RGCs sit within the light-sensitive tissue at the back of your eyes, the retina, with projections that run along your optic nerve to your brain. How these projections develop isn’t clear. So researchers now use stem cells to create a human organoid model that mimics the eye and brain region that processes visual information (called the telencephalon or cerebrum). Imaging revealed these organoids formed concentric zones of cells which mimicked the telencephalon, optic disc (where the optic nerve meets the retina), optic stalk (which matures into the optic nerve) and retina. RGCs grew projections (pictured, green) towards and along a path marked out by optic disc and optic stalk-like cells, highlighting the usefulness of this model for studying RGCs in health and disease.

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 Wei Liu and colleagues
• Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Department of Genetics, The Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx NY, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, June 2023