T Michael Redmond

Biography

Dr. Redmond received his Ph.D. in 1983 from University College, Dublin (Ireland) following graduate training at Dr. Rosalie Crouch’s lab at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC. He received post-doctoral training as a Visiting Fellow, and then Staff Fellow, with Dr. Barbara Wiggert and Jerry Chader in the Laboratory of Retinal Cell & Molecular Biology (LRCMB), National Eye Institute (NEI), investigating interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein (IRBP). Dr. Redmond was tenured in 1990 as research biologist in LRCMB when he began to study RPE65, then newly discovered by him and his group. Dr. Redmond and his colleagues demonstrated the essential role of RPE65 in vision, that mutations in the human RPE65 gene cause Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), that RPE65 is necessary for the all-trans to 11-cis isomerization of vitamin A in the retina, and that RPE65 is the crucial retinol isomerase enzyme of the vitamin A visual cycle. In addition, his group was the first to identify and clone the mammalian beta-carotene monooxygenase 1 (BCMO1) enzyme, a close relative of RPE65 that catalyzes the first step in formation of vitamin A from pro-vitamin A carotenoids in animals.

Research Interest

Ophthalmology and Molecular Biology