Newcastle NUBI PAW 2023

Cardiovascular defects (CVDs) are the most common birth defect affecting 1% of new-borns. In the UK, 13 babies everyday are diagnosed with a CVD, most requiring surgery. The aorta is remodelled from the transient pharyngeal arch arteries during embryogenesis and disruptions to this process can lead to CVDs including interruption of the aortic arch. The aims of this project were not only to determine which pathways are altered in abnormal cardiovascular development, but to compare human and mouse transcriptomes to highlight evolutionarily conserved pathways and any human specific genes.

The neonatal retina produces spontaneous waves of neural activity which propagate laterally across the ganglion cell layer, immediately underneath the developing superficial vascular plexus. Although it is speculated that early activity may guide angiogenesis, the exact relationship between these waves and the formation of the vasculature is still unclear. I have developed a large scale calcium imaging pipeline to study the origin of the retinal waves in relation to the distribution on CCs and the vascular plexus development.