Ally Wang
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Thanh Hoang
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Ophthalmology and CDB / Medicine
Program:
Authors:
Session: Session 6: 3:40 pm – 4:30 pm
Poster: 68
Abstract
This research project aims to identify cell types at the optic nerve head (ONH) of Indochinese rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). These cells are of interest because they likely play a role in the survival of retinal ganglion cells through the secretion of transcription factors and other support processes. Cells of the ONH region were taken from both left and right eyes of a five-year-old male macaque and prepared for multiomics analysis. Cell Ranger ARC and Loupe Browser by 10x Genomics © were used to generate a GEX UMAP plot. In order to categorize these clusters into cell types, known genetic markers from other species (human, zebrafish, mouse, chicken) were used to conduct preliminary analysis of cell types present in the macaque ONH. Several cell types were identified and were broadly consistent with what is currently known about the human ONH, though there was significant retinal contamination in the dataset. Future research should utilize ArchR to remove low-quality data and doublets, identify marker genes specific to the dataset, and read more into scATAC-seq data with integrative analysis. Establishing baseline information on ONH cell types will be helpful in determining which cells can serve as therapeutic targets for diseases such as glaucoma, which causes degeneration of retinal ganglion cells.
