Blood Suppl-eye

Your retinas — the light-sensitive tissue at the backs of your eyes — are nourished by an extensive network of blood vessels. Any disruption to this blood flow can spell trouble for your vision. Abnormal blood vessels are a feature of many eye diseases. Modelling these vascular changes is key to uncovering new therapeutic targets. TGF-β is a signalling molecule involved in blood vessel development, and here researchers have created a mouse model without TGF-β in their retinal vessels. Highlighting blood vessels under fluorescence microscopy revealed the difference between retinas lacking TGF-β (pictured, right) and normal retinas (left). The defects are characteristic of those occurring in retinal diseases such as knot-like new blood vessels called vascular tufts (right) found in diabetic retinopathy.

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 Yanshu Wang and colleagues
• Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife (reviewed preprint), October 2025