Presentation description

The iris's role in the eye is to regulate the amount of light entering the eye. Despite its importance for visual acuity, how the iris forms during embryonic development is poorly understood. The iris is composed of two tissue layers called the iris epithelium (innermost layer) and iris stroma (outermost layer). The iris stromal cells are neural crest-derived while the iris epithelial cells are derived from the neural retina. Using the zebrafish as our model, we are determining the cell movements of the iris stromal and epithelial cells during iris morphogenesis using time-lapse confocal imaging and cell tracking of fluorescent nuclei.