Description
The pigmented portion of ciliary epithelium in the adult mammalian eye harbors mitotically quiescent retinal sphere cells, which are capable of self-renewal and differentiating into retinal neurons when assayed in vitro; however, very little is known about the molecular mechanism controlling the proliferation and differentiation of these adult retinal stem cells or their molecular resemblance to mutipotent stem/progenitor cells during early eye development. This experiment studies the gene expression of first passage and primary human and mouse retinal sphere cells.