| Mouse Lens Research |
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| An area of research is the role of the membrane skeleton in the eye lens, a specialized epithelial tissue comprised of many layers of long, thin fiber cells tightly packed in a regular hexagonal geometric pattern that optimizes lens transparency. Tmod1 is upregulated upon fiber cell differentation and assembled on fiber cell lateral membranes, where it is associated with a short gTM isoform in membrane skeleton. The intrinsic elasticity of the long-range spectrin-actin network may provide balanced membrane tension to uniformly distribute external and internal forces present during lens growth and focusing. |
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Laboratory for Cellular Architecture