Alapakkam Sampath Laboratory

Our research focuses on the following questions:

• How can rod photoresponses in the mammalian retina provide such an enormous range of rod vision - from single-photon responses in few rods to light bright enough to activate thousands or tens of thousands of rhodopsin pigment molecules per second?
• How do the many mechanisms of pigment regeneration influence photoreceptor and circuit-level sensitivity in steady light?
• What are the molecules that determine the specificity of synaptic connections between photoreceptors and bipolar cells during development? How are rod and cone photoresponses integrated in the outer retina to provide a seamless shift from rod vision to cone vision as the light intensity increases?
• What is the role of retinal remodeling in controlling visual sensitivity during photoreceptor degeneration? How is this remodeling affected when vision is restored with gene therapy?
• How is retinal structure and function altered or conserved across the animal kingdom? What are the implications of these similarities and differences for the evolution of the vertebrate retina?