Dr. Ava Udvadia, UWM Biological Sciences Associate Professor and Associate Chair, will present a talk about her research entitled, “In Search of Evolutionarily Conserved Programs for Rewiring the Visual System After Optic Nerve Damage.” Learn more about Dr. Udvadia’s work here.

Diseases such as glaucoma or stroke can cause irreversible damage to the optic nerve, which leads to permanent loss in visual function. This is because the optic nerve contains the “wiring” that conveys light information detected by the eye to the brain. In humans and warm-blooded animals, the ability to repair damaged wiring in the central nervous system (CNS), severely declines after birth. However, unlike humans, animals such as fish and amphibians have a remarkable capacity for nerve regeneration after CNS injury. Recently we have gained great insight into the regenerative programming that enables functional optic nerve regeneration in zebrafish using genomic techniques. We used zebrafish because these animals are small, have a relatively short lifespan, and are thus amenable to revealing their genetic programming secrets. In this presentation I will show you what we’ve learned from zebrafish so far and how this compares with what is known about the response to optic nerve injury in other vertebrate species, and our ongoing work to functionally validate our genomic findings.

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM via Microsoft Teams, preceded by an informal Q&A from 3:45 – 4:00. Click here to join the meeting, via Microsoft Teams.