To lose (or not have since birth) able to see very similar in life and sheer torture. After all, the man is deprived of one of the most important senses. Because scientists very long lead research to help people recover lost vision. And recently a group of researchers from the US have been isolated from algae a special substance that can help people regain the ability to see.
The fact that some plants, in particular Arabidopsis thaliana, have a special light-sensitive eye, by which the plant determines the level of light and allows the algae to move towards light in order to start the process of photosynthesis to obtain food. For work eye is a protein ChR2. In fact, this protein is not new. It was first identified in the early 2000s, and from the middle of the two thousandth’s use in optogenetics in the study of nerve cells and their reactions among themselves.
Last year, scientists have identified a protein ChR2 in pure form and have started the investigations. It turned out that it can act as a factor in the remodeling of chromatin (the substance of chromosomes, which is a complex of DNA, RNA and proteins) and to regulate the biosynthesis of miRNAs. Thus it is possible to achieve “recovery of cells from the inside.” Moreover, the introduction of ChR2 using a fine needle in the retina of the patient, lost vision due to pigmentary retinitis, allows to stop this process and even reverse it. As the test showed, completely restore vision at this stage is impossible, but to blind regaining the ability to see shapes and outlines of objects, and further disease progression occurs.
Algae will help people to get rid of the blindness
Vladimir Kuznetsov