Research Interests

The retina is a massively parallel analog visual processing computer that uses a wide variety of neurotransmitters and millions of synaptic connections. A large percentage of these connections involve conventional neurotransmitter release at anatomically defined synaptic connections onto well characterized and localized receptors to produce postsynaptic changes in electrical activity at the millisecond time scale. However, many of these same transmitters and receptors can also activate biochemical signal transduction systems which process this same information at the millisecond to minute’s time scales. Several of these biochemical signal transduction systems utilize gases like nitric oxide, carbon monoxide or hydrogen sulfide as signaling molecules. The focus of the research in the Eldred lab is how each of these gasses is used in retinal signaling processing and their roles in retinal pathology.