Sensory cilia are organelles that convey information to the cell from the extracellular environment. In vertebrates, ciliary dysfunction results in ciliopathies that in humans comprise a wide spectrum of developmental disorders. In Drosophila, sensory cilia are found only in the neurons of type I sensory organs, but ciliary dysfunction also has dramatic consequences in this organism because it ...

Ocular tissues are highly dependent on lipid turnover and metabolism, which requires an uptake mechanism for fatty acids from lipoproteins. We studied the activity and expression of lipoprotein lipase (LPL), which catalyzes the hydrolysis of plasma triglycerides, in different ocular regions. Human and bovine eyes were dissected and various specialized anatomical areas were assayed for LPL activ...

Aqueous humor, with its unique low concentration of proteins, is produced by the ciliary body and isolated by the blood-aqueous barrier from the body fluid. Glucose in aqueous humor is a major source of nutrients for lens and corneal cells, and is maintained near the plasma level, suggesting a specific glucose transport mechanism in the blood-aqueous barrier. Using antibodies against erythrocyt...

One of the authors (R.K.) has described, in patients with granulomatous uveitis,' whitish lesions in the ciliary body band which showed hyperfluorescence shortly after fluorescein injection. The hyperfluorescent dots were considered to be granulomas in the ciliary body band. The purpose of this communication is to describe small, discrete, reddish lesions which have shown sharply defined hyperf...

PURPOSE To study the expression of the neurotrophic pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), a protein with neurotrophic and neuronal-survival activities, by the human ocular ciliary epithelium. METHODS Total RNA extracted from human and bovine ocular tissues were screened by Northern blot analysis with cDNA probes for PEDF. Antibodies to PEDF were used to monitor its synthesis and secretion...

Ocular metastasis of renal cell carcinoma is rare, and metastasis to the iris or ciliary body is especially uncommon. Ferry and Font studied 227 cases of metastatic tumors of the eye and orbit and reported that 26 (11.5%) of these lesions were iris or ciliary body tumors and that 2 (0.9%) originated in the kidney. We examined a patient with an iris tumor that metastasized from a renal cell carc...

Primary cilia are ubiquitous, microtubule-based organelles that play diverse roles in sensory transduction in many eukaryotic cells. They interrogate the cellular environment through chemosensing, osmosensing, and mechanosensing using receptors and ion channels in the ciliary membrane. Little is known about the mechanical and structural properties of the cilium and how these properties contribu...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging was used to study changes in the crystalline lens and ciliary body with accommodation and aging. Monocular images were obtained in 15 young (19-29 years) and 15 older (60-70 years) emmetropes when viewing at far (6 m) and at individual near points (14.5 to 20.9 cm) in the younger group. With accommodation, lens thickness increased (mean ± 95% CI: 0.33 ± 0.06 mm) by a ...