Allison Lab

Research in Ted Allison's laboratory focuses on neurodegeneration and neural regeneration, especially within the retina. We use an integrative approach spanning molecular biology, electrophysiology & behaviour to study the development of retinas in fishes and how they are tuned to get the most information available from the environment. Our research has three major streams: i) using zebrafish to investigate questions of photoreceptor development, patterning & regeneration as they pertain to human retinal degenerative disease; ii) The development of zebrafish as an effective model organism for the study of protein folding diseases such as Alzheimer and Prion-related Diseases; iii) Investigating the visual ecology of fishes - how and why do visual systems change over evolutionary time and during the life history of animals.