Frank Werblin

Frank Werblin is Professor of the Graduate School, Division of Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley.^[1]

Education

Werblin earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University studying with Professor John Dowling. He was a Guggenheim Fellow,^[2] and is noted for discovering a number of cellular correlates underlying visual information processing in the retina.

Career

In 1969, Werblin and Dowling published their seminal studies of the electrophysiological response properties of all the major neuron types in the vertebrate retina.^[3] The micropipette used to record from each cell contained a dye so that each physiologically identified cell could also be morphologically characterized within the layers of the retina. In 1978, he published the first isolated retinal slice preparation for a quicker and easier means to access all of the neurons in the various layers of the retina, while leaving the cells largely intact with their supporting matrix and synaptic connections and electrical junctions.^[4] However, because the retinal slice was isolated from the supportive retinal pigment epithelium (PE) that enables the light responses of photoreceptors, light evoked responses were not reported until the retinal slices were constructed with PE still attached.^[5] In this manner, whole cell patch recording of amacrine neurons in the salamander retina allowed light evoked excitatory post-synaptic currents (EPSCs) to be measured for the first time, as well as their light elicited spiking potentials, and voltage-gated currents. The new slice technique allowed, for the first time, a neuron to be characterized by its natural stimulus (light), and then to be fully characterized by its morphological, histological, electrophysiological (EPSCs, voltage gated currents, and graded and spike potentials), and chemical identity.^[6] The new light-responsive slice methodology also allowed interplexiform cells to be identified and characterized for the first time,^[7] as well as sustained and transient amacrine neurons.^[8] Precise localization of synaptic inputs to the cell, and localization of functional receptors in the cell was achieved.^[9] The slice technique would become a standard for retinal research and be developed for other animals with much smaller neurons, including the Zebrafish^[10] and rat.^[11] Werblin would then use these data to construct elegant models of visual information processing in the different layers of the retina.^[12]

Werblin is also a co-inventor of Visionize, a device/software to help low-vision patients.^[13]

References