Delores Takemoto, professor of biochemistry, said the team's research is concentrating on the gap junctions made of proteins that connect the cells in the eye, allowing the passing of communication.

"All of the communication that's going to occur in the eye has got to go, not through a blood cell, but through gap junctions," Takemoto said. "With two different cells trying to communicate, normally cells have a blood supply to send nutrients from one cell to the other. For cells that don't have that, you have to have one cell having little junctions of proteins connecting to the other cell, and things will pass from one cell to another, allowing communication back and forth."

If one cell becomes damaged, the gap junction acts as a bridge to its neighboring cell, damaging it as well, Takemoto said. The damage continues to spread, leading to severe eye damage if the gap junctions are not closed off.

"What we're working on is ways to close that gap junction and prevent that spread," Takemoto said. "What you have to do is design chemicals that will hit those proteins and make them close instead of having them open. There's two ways you can do that: You can either make the gap junction close, or you can pull the proteins away from the cells so they're not communicating."

Takemoto said research is currently being done to develop a chemical that would stop the spread of damaged cells, but the main concern for scientists is the process of injecting the chemical into the eye without causing damage to the retina.

"There is no blood supply that's common in the eye," she said. "The eye and the brain are what we call a blood-brain barrier or a blood-ocular barrier. The blood supply in the rest of the body doesn't mix with the blood su
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Contact: Delores Takemoto
dtak@k-state.edu
785-532-7009
Kansas State University
26-Aug-2005