From 1996-2001, Ashery-Padan was a postdoctoral research fellow at the laboratory of Peter Gruss in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry.
[5] In 2001, Ashery-Padan joined the faculty of Tel Aviv University to establish her laboratory which focuses on solving the complexities of ocular development.
As published in PLOS Biology,[6] she had the main goal of finding the genetic intricacies underlying Age-Related Macular Degeneration by focusing on the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE), a tissue particularly impacted in the early stages of the disease.
Within this context, she found two pivotal proteins, LHX2 and OTX2, as key transcriptional activators that control the expression of numerous genes exclusive to RPE tissue.
Changes in DNA sequences in these genomic regions were shown to affect the expression of nearby genes, one of which encodes an ion channel essential for proper operation of the eyes, increasing the risk of AMD.