Work in Dr. Douglas Vollrath's laboratory is focused on understanding processes in the eye that are relevant to human health and disease. The eye is an organ particularly amenable to genetic analysis because its accessibility facilitates detection and characterization of a variety of disease states, yet such diseases rarely impair life span or fertility. The Vollrath lab frequently starts with genes known to be important in the eye because of their association with ocular disease phenotypes, and then investigates molecular mechanisms by uncovering pathways and processes relevant to normal eye function and pathogenesis.