Visvanathan Ramamurthy
West Virginia University, WV·Neuroscience
Our ability to see depends on photoreceptors, the light-sensing nerve cells of the retina. Each photoreceptor has an outer segment, a stack of membrane discs that holds the molecules that capture light.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biochemistry
Genetics
- Topics
photoreceptors
photoreceptor outer segment
retina
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Identify the best AAV gene therapy regimen for PROM1-associated blindness, delivering working gene copies with a harmless virus in animal models that mimic the disease and measuring retinal light responses by electrophysiology.
- Uncover how Prominin-1 (PROM1), a protein needed to form the light-sensing discs of photoreceptor outer segments, shapes these discs, using immunoprecipitation and proteomics to find its protein partners.
- Determine how ARL13B, a small molecular-switch protein, keeps the photoreceptor cilium stable and controls chemical tags on tubulin, its skeletal building block, using animal models, cell culture and biochemistry.
- Test whether changing tubulin modifications protects photoreceptors and restores visual responses in several genetic mouse models of inherited retinal degeneration.
More about the research
This outer segment is built on a cilium, a hair-like extension of the cell. In many inherited blinding diseases, the outer segment fails to form properly or breaks down, and the photoreceptor then dies. The lab studies the proteins that build and maintain outer segments, with the aim of finding therapies for inherited blindness. One project focuses on how outer segments are built, and another on how the cilium beneath them stays stable. A third grant supports a campus-wide vision research center.
Why it matters
Inherited retinal diseases cause blindness when photoreceptors lose their outer segments and die, and patients with PROM1 mutations currently have no treatment. This work could define a gene therapy regimen for PROM1-related blindness. It could also reveal molecules, such as tubulin modifications, that might be targeted to keep photoreceptors alive in other inherited retinal diseases. The vision research center aims to reduce visual impairment in Appalachia, where rates are among the highest in the nation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Muna I. Naash
University of Houston, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Map which usherin isoforms are made in the retina and the cochlea, using knock-in mice with fluorescently tagged usherin, and find out how the c.2299delG mutation causes hearing and vision defects in ush2aG/G mice.
Tylor Lewis
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience·Early-career
Comprehensively characterize retinal degeneration in global ADAM9 knockout mice, focusing on the interface between photoreceptor outer segments and the retinal pigment epithelium.
Tomoharu Kanie
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center, OK·Biology
Isolate the ciliary vesicle using RAB34, a vesicle-marking switch protein, and NCS1, which captures the vesicle at the cilium base, and identify the vesicle's lipid and protein composition.
The school
West Virginia University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $259M a year on research, 201 research doctorates a year.
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