Brian Clark's Lab – WashU Department of Ophthalmology

The Clark Lab conducts research investigating how the vertebrate retina develops from a pool of multi-potent retinal progenitor cells (RPCs). We use a combination of molecular biology and genetic techniques to understand how gene regulatory networks regulate RPC proliferation, cell-cycle exit, and cell differentiation, with the long-term goal of understanding how genetic aberrations contribute to retinal disorders. Areas of research within the lab include:

1. Understanding the mechanisms regulating retinal neurogenesis and cell fate specification
2. Characterization of long non-coding RNA expression and function
3. Development of novel tools for use in single-cell sequencing technologies
4. Assessment of changes in cis-regulatory sequence activities