Eduardo Solessio, Ph.D

Research Assistant Professor
Department of Ophthalmology
Department of Physiology
S.U.N.Y. Upstate Medical University
Department of Physiology
3258C Weiskotten Hall
766 Irving Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13210
Tel: 315-464-4771

Dr. Solessio is a young vision scientist who shows great promise for a highly productive career as an independent investigator. We are indeed delighted that he is enthusiastic about joining our Department of Ophthalmology and participating in its new Center for Vision Research. He was appointed to the position of Research Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology beginning April 1, 1999

Indicative of Dr. Solessio's outstanding abilities are two papers he published in the prestigious journal, Nature. In a 1993 paper he and a co-author reported the discovery of a vertebrate photoreceptor that both depolarizes and hyperpolarizes in response to light. His remarkable finding put into question a widely accepted tenet about the transduction mechanisms of rods and cones, and led Nature to ask three eminent vision scientists to comment on his result in "News and Views" in the same issue. Pursuing this fascinating finding, Dr. Solessio last year published in colaboration with Drs. Yan and Finn a second Nature paper showing that light can increase cGMP in a vertebrate photoreceptor rather than decrease it as previously thought. The paper puts forth a new tenet: all ciliary photoreceptors possess a cGMP cascade, but the sign of the light response may be either hyperpolarizing or depolarizing. Finally, Dr. Solessio with Dr. Yan and Dr. Xiong have just submitted for publication a third paper which describes the molecular mechanisms underlying the initial, surprising discovery.

In addition to this work he has carried out an imaginative series of experiments on the potassium conductances of Muller cells which are the major metabolic support cells (glial) of the inner retina. The first paper on this work was published this year in Visual Neuroscience and two more on which he is first author have been submitted to the Journal of Neurophysiology. In addition to these studies, he was involved in the recent discovery of a new retinal protein, synoretin, which belongs to a family synucleins that are known to be involved in human neurogenerative diseases. It is evident that Dr. Solessio's research in vision has both breadth and depth.

Dr. Solessio will strengthen our eye research program by bringing to our Department a high level of expertise in analyzing the function of single neurons in the vertebrate retina. His goal is to combine molecular and cell biology with electrophysiology and imaging techniques to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying diseased states of the retina. Emphasis will be on using modern transgenic techniques to study both phototransduction and morphogenesis of rods under conditions that lead to retinal degeneration.

His proposed areas of research have high clinical relevance because they directly attack the molecular causes of retinal degeneration. The highly innovative transgenic techniques provide the opportunity of visualizing and studying retinal degeneration in real time with a living animal. Such studies hold great promise for gaining important insights about why a multitude of mutations of rod-specific proteins have the common outcome of rod degeneration, and why degenerating rods cause cones to degenerate. These are critical questions in vision research and Dr. Solessio has the talent and expertise to answer them.

Education

Ph.D. in Neuroscience, 1993
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

M.S. in Biomedical Engineering, 1988
Iowa State University, Ames, IA

B.A. in Electrical Engineering, 1985
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Academic Employment

University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT - Post-doctoral Fellow

Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY - Graduate Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Bioengineering

Iowa State University, Ames, IA - Graduate Research Assistant

Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Ingenieria Biomedica, Argentina - Research Assistant

Honors

• Fight for Sight- Prevent Blindness America Research Award, 1994-95
  
• Syracuse University Grant for Research and Creative Projects, 1992
  
• Syracuse University Fellowship, 1989-91 and 1992-93
  
• IEEE Student Convention in Buenos Aires, Argentina: IBM Award, 1984

Other Employment

IBM Argentina, Systems Programmer, 1985

Escuela San Juan, Argentina, High School Math Teacher, 1982

Thesis and Dissertation

PhD Dissertation, 1993, Syracuse University:
Functional Electrophysiology of a Simple Vertebrate Retina: The Lacertilian Parietal Eye.

MS Thesis, 1988, Iowa State University:
Simple Computer Models for Hierarchical Processing Applied to Sensory Receptive Fields.

Publications

Barlow R.B., Prakash R., and E. Solessio 1993. The Neural Netwo rk of Limulus Retina: from Computer to behavior. American Zoologist 33:66-78.

Engbretson G.A. and E. Solessio 1993, Physiology and functional Implications of a Unique Vertebrate Visual System. In R.T. Verrillo (ed.) Sensory Research: Papers in Honor of J.J . Zwislocki. L- Erlbaum Assoc., Hillsdale, NJ.

J.T. Finn, Solessio E., and K.-W. Yau 1997. A cGMP-gated cation channel in depolarizing photoreceptors of the lizard parietal eye. Nature 385:815-819.

Linn D.M., Solessio E., Perlman I., and E.M. Lasater 1998. The role of potassium conductance in the generation of light responses in Muller cells of the turtle retinas Visual Neuroscience 15:449-458.

Xiong W.-H., Solessio E., and K.-W. Yau. An unusual CGMP signaling pathway mediating the depolarizing light responses of the vertebrate parietal-eye photoreceptor. Nature Neuroscience 1:359-365.

Surguchov A., Surgucheva I., Solessio E., and W. Baehr. Synoretin: a new retina protein belonging to the synuclein family. Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience 13:95-103.

Solessio E. and G. Engbretson. Electroretinogram of the parietal eye of lizards: photoreceptor, glial, and lens contributions. Visual Neuroscience 16:895-907.

Solessio E., Linn D., Perlman I., and E.M. Lasater. A characterization with barium of potassium currents in turtle Muller cells. Journal of Neuroscience.