Lanterna Rally

Author: C. Chiba

Publisher:

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 9788130802008

Vision is one of the most important senses for humans. The retina is a part of the central nervous system (CNS) located in the eye, being essential for the initial process of vision. Therefore, diseases or traumatic injury of the retina seriously affect normal life. Generally speaking, lower vertebrates such as fishes and amphibians are endowed with excellent abilities to self-repair/self-regenerate their missing body-parts including the retina after a traumatic injury, but mysteriously such a capability tends to decrease in higher vertebrates; for example, humans regenerative capacity is quite low. Such a tendency in the evolution of regenerative ability is paradoxical because restoration of missing body-parts seems profitable for every animal. This biological mystery remains to be uncovered, but once it is brought to light, innovative (or ultimate) medical treatments of which we often dream in scientific fiction would have a reality. Today, biological and medical studies on the retinal repair/regeneration are progressing vigorously. The purpose of this book is to provide the most up-to-date findings about the strategies for retinal repair/regeneration in vertebrates to under- and post-graduate students and researchers in the department of biology and medicine as well as to doctors in hospitals. Here regenerative medicine is considered to be one of the strategies used by humans who can manipulate wisdom. The retina of vertebrates is a homologous tissue (or phylogenetically identical). The constituent cells of a retina and their organization as well as the retinal ontogeny are highly conserved during phylogeny. Therefore, a systematic comparison is feasible to clarify the similarities and differences in the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying retinal repair/regeneration between animals. The animals appearing in this book are the teleost fishes (goldfish, zebrafish), urodele amphibians (newts), anuran amphibians (Xenopus), birds (chicken), marsupials (Brazilian opossum) and mammals (rat, mouse, humans). The readers will likely see the common cellular mechanisms and molecular pathways between the strategies for retinal self-repair/self-regeneration in lower vertebrates and the strategies for retinal repair/regeneration in mammals. This book proves the necessity of comparative studies of latent abilities of retinal self-repair/self-regeneration in vertebrates to get clues to promote our retinal repair/regeneration safely and efficiently. During a period of making this book, Dr. Victor Ivanovich Mitashov, a great leader of the field of regeneration and a co-author of my chapter in this book, died on the 24th of April 2007, just after submission of our manuscript to the publisher Research Signpost. Receiving such sadden news, I could not find any words, but the contributors of this book asked me to make a separate section in memory of him at the beginning of the book and to dedicate this book to him. Immediately I asked Mr. N. J. Sudarsan, the General Manager of Research Signpost and Dr. S. G. Pandalai, the Managing Editor about these. They generously accepted our proposal. Here I would like to express a special thanks to them on behalf of the contributors, and personally to the contributors. Thank you very much .