Blocking apoptosis promotes survival and alters developmental dynamics of human retinal ganglion cells in retinal organoids
Jingliang Simon Zhang, Brian Guy, Clayton P Santiago, Caterina Tiozzo, Meghana Sreenath, Ya-Wen Chen, Seth Blackshaw, Robert J Johnston · 2026
Read Blocking apoptosis promotes survival and alters developmental dynamics of human retinal ganglion cells in retinal organoids by Jingliang Simon Zhang, Brian Guy, Clayton P Santiago, Caterina Tiozzo, Meghana Sreenath, Ya-Wen Chen, Seth Blackshaw, Robert J Johnston (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13181862.txt.
Description
Jingliang Simon Zhang and seven co-authors study cell death in the developing human eye in a 2026 paper. Retinal ganglion cells carry vision from the eye to the brain. In many animals, a large share of them die on schedule during development, pruning the final count. How that pruning shapes human cells was unclear.
The team examined fetal retinas and lab-grown retinal organoids. Both showed two death waves: an early one among young precursor cells and a later one among ganglion cells and other neurons. The lab-grown tissue added a wave of a messier death type. When the team genetically blocked the orderly death pathway, more ganglion cells survived, but they formed and matured more slowly. The trade-off matters for anyone using organoids to model diseases like glaucoma: keeping cells alive is not the same as growing them well.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jingliang Simon Zhang, Brian Guy, Clayton P Santiago, Caterina Tiozzo, Meghana Sreenath, Ya-Wen Chen, Seth Blackshaw, Robert J Johnston |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 85 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |