NOTE: This page is for archival purposes only and may contain information that is outdated.

UI receives $667k in ARRA funding for interdisciplinary approach to retinal disease gene identification


Val Sheffield, MD, PhD	Markus Kuehn, PhD

University of Iowa researchers were awarded $667,195 through The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for a project seeking to identify the genes that cause human retinal degeneration. Research will be led by Val Sheffield, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics and ophthalmology, and involve Markus Kuehn, PhD, assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, and colleagues from the UI Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Dr. Sheffield is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and holds the Martin and Ruth Carver Chair in Genetics.

The project specifically seeks to identify genes that cause a syndromic form of photoreceptor degeneration known as Bardet-Biedl Syndrome, as well as autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa. More information at: https://research.uiowa.edu/arra/project/171