CX3CL1 and diabetic retinopathy: To explore the roles of fractalkine and microglia in the early stages of diabetic retinopathy (DR), Rodríguez et al. employed recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors (rAAV) carrying plasmids encoding either membrane-bound or soluble fractalkine to transfect retinal tissue, enhancing fractalkine expression prior to diabetes induction [21].