Jay Neitz
| Jay Neitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| 🏡 Residence | Seattle, Washington |
| 🏳️ Nationality | American |
| 🎓 Alma mater | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| 💼 Occupation | |
Jay Neitz (born 1953) is an American professor of ophthalmology and a color vision researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Education and career
Neitz attended San Jose State University for his undergraduate, finishing with a BA in psychology and physics in 1979.[1] He went on to receive his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1986 under the direction of Gerald Jacobs. His thesis title was Variations in Color Matching Among Humans with Normal Color Vision.[2] After his PhD, he stayed at the same institution as a postdoctoral researcher for several years before starting a permanent position at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He moved to the University of Washington in 2009, where he is currently the Bishop Professor of Ophthalmology.[1]
Cone cells and the numbers of colors an organism can see
According to Jay Neitz, each of the three standard color-detecting cone cells in the retina – blue, green and red—can pick up about 100 different gradations of color. But, he says, the brain can combine those variations exponentially, multiplying each new variety of cone by 100, so that the average human trichromat can distinguish about one million different hues.[3][4]
This means that a monochromat can see 100 different colors, a dichromat can see 10,000 different colors, a trichromat can see 1,000,000 different colors, a tetrachromat can see 100,000,000 different colors, and a pentachromat can see 10,000,000,000 different colors.[4]
Curing color blindness in monkeys by gene therapy
Neitz and his wife, Maureen Neitz, Ph.D., a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington began training in 1999 two dichromatic squirrel monkeys. After five months of gene therapy treatment, the monkeys began to acquire trichromatic color vision. They say this almost seemed to suddenly occur overnight. After that, they spent a year and a half to test the monkeys' ability to discern 16 hues.[5][6]
Potential for curing color blindness in humans
According to Gerald H. Jacobs, Ph.D., a research professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research, this means that color blindness can be cured. "This is also another example of how utterly plastic the visual system is to change," Jacobs said. "The nervous system can extract information from alterations to photopigments and make use of it almost instantaneously."[5]
Possibility of turning human trichromats into tetrachromats
According to Jay Neitz, “If the neural circuits for color vision are sufficiently plastic, it may be possible to use gene therapy to replace missing photopigments in the eyes of color blind humans." Neitz further states that since apparently "the neural circuits can handle even higher dimensions of color vision that could come from artificially adding a fourth cone type, it is possible that gene therapy could also be used to extend normal human color vision", making human trichromats into tetrachromats.[4]
Evolutionary appearance of vision
According to Neitz, “The first appearance of the photoreceptive structures that were the precursors to the earliest eyes probably appeared between about 800 and 1100 million years ago (MYA).”[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Jay Neitz, PhD (faculty profile)". Department of Ophthalmology. University of Washington. Retrieved January 3, 2020.
- ↑ Neitz, Jay (1986). Variations in Color Matching Among Humans with Normal Color Vision (PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara.
- ↑ Mark Roth (September 13, 2006). "Some women who are tetrachromats may see 100,000,000 colors, thanks to their genes". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved November 12, 2018.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Neitz, Jay; Carroll, Joseph; Neitz, Maureen (January 2001). "Color Vision: Almost Reason Enough for Having Eyes" (PDF). Optics & Photonics News. Optical Society of America.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Scientists Cure Color Blindness in Monkeys". Science News Daily. September 16, 2009. Retrieved November 12, 2018.
- ↑ Brandon Heim (September 16, 2009). "Gene Therapy Cures Color Blind Monkeys". Wired.com. Retrieved November 12, 2018.
External links
- Jay Neitz publications indexed by Google Scholar
- Neitz Lab Website
- Reweaving the Rainbow Lecture at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology, October 10, 2013
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