This award supports Dana Garcia of Southwest Texas State University in a collaboration with Jurgen Markl of the Institute of Zoology at the University of Mainz, Germany. The project will focus on the role of intermediate filaments in pigment granules movements in retinal pigment epithelium of teleost fishes. Such movements are associated with changes in light conditions. The U.S. expertise and facilities are complemented by those in the German lab, which is a leader in this area of research. The German group uses a variety of techniques, including molecular biological, biophysical, and biochemical ones as well as cell biology to evaluate the characteristics of the filaments under study, and the German laboratory offers facilities not available at Southwest Texas State. Together, the U.S. and German groups will be able to make advances in this important field that would not be possible by either side alone.
