With support from the ISCRM Fellowship, Theresa is developing two complementary high-throughput single-cell techniques to investigate disease-associated enhancers in retinal organoids. Enhancers—noncoding DNA elements that regulate gene expression—have been linked to several inherited retinal disorders. By using CRISPR/Cas9 to disrupt candidate enhancers within retinal organoids, she aims to identify and characterize those that contribute to disease pathogenesis. These approaches offer powerful tools for studying enhancer function and deepen our understanding of epigenetic regulation in retinal development and disease.
