Algae can help blind people see their eyes

American scientists discovered that a living algae common in lakes can provide an effective treatment for blindness.

Detects algae that help restore eye sight

Retrosense, an American biotechnology company, hopes to transplant a light-sensitive protein from a certain algae into the eyes of blind people to restore their eyesight. They planned to begin clinical trials soon in humans, after the transplant process was approved last month by the US Food and Drug Administration.

According to Wired, chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a simple single-celled organism that grows in soil and water environment. Algae cannot "look" , but have a primitive "eye spot" that allows them to sense where sunlight is and move around the pond so they can be illuminated by light. They can then convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis.

Algae chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a simple single-celled organism that grows in soil and water environment.

Like the human eyes, algae's eye spots use light-sensitive proteins and one of them is channelrhodopsin-2 . RetroSense is currently hoping to transplant this algae protein gene into the eyes of blind people to help them look back.

The gene of channelrhodopsin-2 algae will be injected into the patient's eye, making previously unrecognizable cells become light-sensitive cells, capable of restoring limited vision. This technology is known as "genetic photometry" and has been used by neuroscientists for decades.

Until now, RetroSense researchers have tested the process in mice and non-human primates. As a result, all experimental animals recovered part of their eyesight after treatment.

The team is planning to use the first genetics of human genetics. For this type of clinical experiment, they are recruiting 15 patients with retinitis pigmentosa , an eye disease that leads to vision impairment.

If the test is successful, the next question is how much channelrhodopsin-2 can restore human vision. The reason is that the protein of the algae is found to be less sensitive than the cones in the human eye up to 1,000 times. In addition, the retina is used to receive signals from many rods and cones in the eye, in contrast to the "raw light" signals, different from channelrhodopsin-2.