The most common form of inherited human blindness is retinitis pigmentosa, a family of disorders in which the photoreceptor cells of the retina progressively degenerate and disappear over a period of years. The paucity of human donor tissues at early stages of these diseases has led scientists worldwide to turn to similar retinal degeneration mutations in laboratory animals. These animal models of the human diseases have played a prominent role in vision research in the past several decades, and much has been learned from them about the cellular mechanisms of inherited photoreceptor degenerations and potential therapeutic measures for these diseases. Among the various species with retinal degenerations, mice and rats have been used most extensively, primarily because of the experimental advantages of short gestation time; small size; powerful genetic control in the form of several readily available retinal degeneration mutants, multiple inbred and congenic strains with genetic controls and different eye pigmentation types; and the potential to carry out certain embryological procedures such as the production of experimental chimeras and transgenic mice and rats. The rapidly escalating costs to maintain animal colonies on individual grant budgets are beyond the means of most vision scientists, and most investigators do not have the time or expertise in mammalian genetics to develop or maintain various inbred, congenic, coisogenic and transgenic rodent strains. Thus, the goals of this proposal are 1) to maintain breeding colonies of such mice and rats that are appropriate for studies on various forms of inherited and environmentally induced retinal degenerations, and 2) to distribute these animals and eye tissues to investigators who request them. The lines that will be developed and/or maintained and distributed are 1) Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rats with inherited retinal dystrophy; 2) three rat strains congenic with RCS that serve as genetic controls and with different eye pigmentation and rates of retinal degeneration; 3) F344-c/+ congenic strain of rats that provides albino and pigmented littermates that are optimal for studying the role of eye pigmentation in light damage, visual system development, drug sequestration in the eye, and other aspects of ocular pigmentation; 4) transgenic rat lines with different forms of retinal degeneration; 5) congenic control mice for the retinal degeneration slow (rds) strain; and 6) albino mice that have a genetically regulated resistance to the damaging effects of excessive light. Based on past performance, this colony and the distribution of animals will benefit scores of vision scientists and will have a major impact on research leading to the causes, prevention and treatment of inherited and environmentally induced retinal degenerations.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EY006842-11
Application #
2459098
Study Section
Visual Sciences C Study Section (VISC)
Project Start
1986-09-30
Project End
1999-07-31
Budget Start
1997-08-01
Budget End
1998-07-31
Support Year
11
Fiscal Year
1997
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California San Francisco
Department
Anatomy/Cell Biology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
073133571
City
San Francisco
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
94143
LaVail, Matthew M; Nishikawa, Shimpei; Steinberg, Roy H et al. (2018) Phenotypic characterization of P23H and S334ter rhodopsin transgenic rat models of inherited retinal degeneration. Exp Eye Res 167:56-90
Roddy, Gavin W; Yasumura, Douglas; Matthes, Michael T et al. (2017) Long-term photoreceptor rescue in two rodent models of retinitis pigmentosa by adeno-associated virus delivery of Stanniocalcin-1. Exp Eye Res 165:175-181
Stiles, Megan; Qi, Hui; Sun, Eleanor et al. (2016) Sphingolipid profile alters in retinal dystrophic P23H-1 rats and systemic FTY720 can delay retinal degeneration. J Lipid Res 57:818-31
LaVail, Matthew M; Yasumura, Douglas; Matthes, Michael T et al. (2016) Gene Therapy for MERTK-Associated Retinal Degenerations. Adv Exp Med Biol 854:487-93
Vollrath, Douglas; Yasumura, Douglas; Benchorin, Gillie et al. (2015) Tyro3 Modulates Mertk-Associated Retinal Degeneration. PLoS Genet 11:e1005723
Alavi, Marcel V; Chiang, Wei-Chieh; Kroeger, Heike et al. (2015) In Vivo Visualization of Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in the Retina Using the ERAI Reporter Mouse. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 56:6961-70
Orhan, Elise; Dalkara, Deniz; Neuillé, Marion et al. (2015) Genotypic and phenotypic characterization of P23H line 1 rat model. PLoS One 10:e0127319
Murray, Susan F; Jazayeri, Ali; Matthes, Michael T et al. (2015) Allele-Specific Inhibition of Rhodopsin With an Antisense Oligonucleotide Slows Photoreceptor Cell Degeneration. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 56:6362-75
Ghosh, Rajarshi; Wang, Likun; Wang, Eric S et al. (2014) Allosteric inhibition of the IRE1? RNase preserves cell viability and function during endoplasmic reticulum stress. Cell 158:534-48
Hiramatsu, Nobuhiko; Messah, Carissa; Han, Jaeseok et al. (2014) Translational and posttranslational regulation of XIAP by eIF2? and ATF4 promotes ER stress-induced cell death during the unfolded protein response. Mol Biol Cell 25:1411-20

Showing the most recent 10 out of 66 publications