Slashdot Mirror
Blind Mice See Again After Cell Transplants
Korbinus writes, "Scientists have managed to restore vision in blind mice by transplanting light-sensitive cells in their eyes, cells on their way to become photoreceptors. This might be a important step towards new treatments of eye disease."
I wonder if this procedure will work for Republicans? :-)
Thr^H^H^HTwo blind mice.
...and here i thought the future of vision was a gold-plated bananaclip visor.
"Holy crap, look at the size of that carving knife! Run!"
Task Mangler
Now if they could just help them regenerate the tails the farmers wife cut off the mice will be whole again.
I guess they don't have any excuse now.
It could work for children who are discovered to be blind, or those who gradually lose their vision from macular degeneration. This won't help those who were blind from birth and are now adults since their visual cortex will not have developed.
And, of course, this only works on mice. Why is it that mice always get the best treatments?
I for one welcome our new seeing mouse overlords.
I have two eyes, I have two feet.
We know this worked *how*?
"Now Petey, give us two squeeks if you can see again!"
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Surgeons have succeeded in transplanting a frog's brain into a cloned copy of The Handsome Prince's body.
This comes after last weeks news that Little Miss Muffet didn't know what a "tuffet" was at the time of the incident with the spider, and that her subsequent testimony was completely fabricated by her lawyers.
I wonder would this work for replacing the cones in a person's eye? Currently there are three types of cones sensitive to L-, M- and S-wavelengths of light. Colour blindness is caused by either missing or reduced function of cones. A potential fix for colour blindness? Presuming the brain is elastic enough and colour opponent neurons will kick in for missing cones.
Or add a fourth or fifth groups of cones sensitive to different wavelengths of light - UV, etc? If we can capture these extra wavelengths what will our brains do? Ignore or use?
Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run, see how they run,
They all ran after the lab tech's wife,
were given new sight with one gene splice,
saw her and ran for the rest of their life.
The three spliced mice.
----------------
(No offense to the lab tech's wives out there. =))
I read TFA, maybe I missed it. The question I want answered is whether they can harvest these cells once and grow them to use them many times. You can do that with stem cells. Curious if it works that way here. It seems that way but I'm not sure.
You also have to wonder about type matches. Maybe it's an incorrect analogy, but blood and organ transfusions need to be matched by type. Is the same true here? I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
Just some food for thought in a more serious vein.
How about not transplanting any cells and instead infecting existing cells with a virus that causes them express to CHOP-2? CHOP-2 (channelrhodopsin) is a light activated cation/proton channel excited by blue (~480nm if I remember right) light. Basically, if a neural cell expresses CHOP-2, shining a blue light on it will activate it. A http://www.neuron.org/content/article/abstract?uid =PIIS0896627306001760 paper in Neuron last spring explained how this technique was used to overcome blindness in mice.
I call dibs on mutating the channel to change its excitability spectrum into IR, allowing me to see in the (visible spectrum) dark after being infected with it. Or maybe I can sell it to the military...
What if somthing goes wrong & the cells become cancerous ?
Would someone have to walk around looking like this ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.