Macular and retinal nerve fibre layer thickness in strabismus and anisometropic amblyopia.

Electrophysiological studies investigating the relationship between amblyopia and retinal function have in the past produced conflicting findings, leaving the retinal correlates of amblyopia, if they exist, unknown. Recent advances in technology, and in particular the emergence of optical coherence tomography, has resulted in further investigations of the retinal nerve fibre layer and macula of amblyopia patients using these instruments. This review summarises the recent literature in this area and discusses various issues relating to this research.

Biological activities encoded by the murine mesenchymal stem cell transcriptome provide a basis for their developmental potential and broad therapeutic efficacy.

We used serial analysis of gene expression to catalog the transcriptome of murine mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) enriched from bone marrow by immunodepletion. Interrogation of this database, results of which are delineated in the appended databases, revealed that immunodepleted murine MSCs (IDmMSCs) highly express transcripts encoding connective tissue proteins and factors modulating T-cell proliferation, inflammation, and bone turnover. Categorizing the transcriptome based on gene ontologies revealed the cells also expressed mRNAs encoding proteins that regulate mesoderm development or that are characteristic of determined mesenchymal cell lineages, thereby reflecting both their stem cell nature and differentiation potential.

Are Duane syndrome and infantile esotropia allelic?

Purpose: To evaluate the clinical overlap of families with Duane syndrome and infantile esotropia to determine whether the identification of genes for Duane syndrome may explain some cases of infantile esotropia.

Methods: Three separate groups of patients were evaluated. 1) Families with features of infantile esotropia were identified through the Strabismus Inheritance Study Tasmania (SIST).

Investigation of albinism genes in congenital esotropia.

Purpose: Esotropia is a feature of albinism. Amongst esotropic patients there may be mild unrecognised albinos. Oculocutaneous albinism shares several clinical features with congenital esotropia.

Characterization of mesenchymal stem cells isolated from murine bone marrow by negative selection.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are typically enriched from bone marrow via isolation of the plastic adherent, fibroblastoid cell fraction. However, plastic adherent cultures elaborated from murine bone marrow are an admixture of fibroblastoid and hematopoietic cell types. Here we report a reliable method based on immunodepletion to fractionate fibroblastoid cells from hematopoietic cells within plastic adherent murine marrow cultures.