Happy Memorial Day! Even though the summer solstice does not come for a few weeks yet, temperature-wise and culturally, it is summer! Hot time in the summertime! (Sly and the Family Stone, 1969).
We opened the pool yesterday. My husband wrenched his back in the process so the puppygirls and I are hanging at home together. No chauffeur. Such is life when you cannot drive any more.
The girls are ‘helping’ with pool maintenance. I am vacuuming and they are getting in my way. We need to get Etta water wings. I think we have the only Labrador Retriever in the world who is a bad swimmer!
Last time I reached in to fish her out, she clawed me all up. It would be nice if ‘maturity’ did not bring such thin skin!
So, moving right along, I hope you all saw Lin’s post about Dan Roberts yearly summary. I loved what Dan said about knowledge. Dan said, “Knowledge is the best way I know of to keep the fear of the unknown at bay, making living with low vision less stressful, and acceptance a little easier.” So glad that great minds think alike!? When you shine a light under the bed the monsters disappear.
Looking at what Dan has covered, I see we have some overlap, much stuff that is exclusively his. One thing he reviews is a very recently published research study that may ‘coax’ (my word) Muller glia cells into becoming photoreceptors without doing all the stem cell production stuff.
So, inquiring minds…sometimes bite off more than they can chew! Researchgate has an abstract about Muller Cells in the Healthy and Diseased Retina. The article says Muller cells ensheath all retina neurons and there is a “multitude of functional interactions” between Muller cells and retina neurons. In other words, they are work buddies and they are tight! It appears to my social scientist little mind that Muller cells help to maintain a good working environment for retinal neurons. (Please read and interpret yourself as the girl has been known to be wrong before!) There is some evidence they have a role in angiogenesis. That is you, you wet folks. Angiogenesis is the creation of new blood vessels.
Now all is not perfect with this bromance. The abstract also says “virtually every disease of the retina is associated with a reactive Muller cell gliosis”. According to Wikipedia gliosis is a nonspecific reactive change of glial cells to damage to the central nervous system. The rest of the explanation is a lot of sciencey stuff that made my eyes cross but it sort of sounded like damage to you causes damage to me and then I return the favor. Oh, and the macrophages get into the act, too. Social scientist here…would you like to talk learning theories? I am pretty good at that. ? This, not so much.
Bottom line here is our Muller glia cells and retina neurons really need one another. They share a lot and it may be possible to ‘retrain’ a Muller glia cell to do the job of a retinal neurons and actually even ‘become’ a retinal neuron. Very cool.
And now back to zen and the art of pool maintenance…with apologies to Edward Abbey. Have a good weekend!?
Written May 26th, 2018