TH

While not life threatening, blindness and retinal disease are profoundly debilitating and greatly affect quality of life.  Understandably, gene therapy has been subject to controversy given it’s potential effects on the rest of our cellular processes.  However, a genetically diseased eye being an isolated organ quickly becomes a promising prospect for such therapies.  Specifically, RPE antibodies are powerful diagnostic tools to test the viability of these clinical treatments. 

In the synthesis pathway for the catecholamines - dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, tyrosine hydroxylase is the rate-limiting enzyme. Through alternative mRNA splicing, a wide molecular diversity of TH isoforms are generated that are tissue-specific and carry varied enzymatic activities, allowing for differential neurotransmitter availability at various synapses.

Tyrosine hydroxylase is the rate-limiting enzyme in the synthesis pathway of the catecholamines dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.