The scientists from the University of California have first deciphered how golden apples restore their lost eyes and find out that his visual organs are surprisingly similar to humans. The work was published in Nature Communications (Natcom).
Man's eyes are a very complex organ that is almost impossible to restore. However, freshwater snail Pomacea Canaliculata, which is also known as golden apple snail, is close to everything else. It is able to fully restore the lost eye, retina, lens and even a visual nerve.
"Apple snails are exceptional creatures," said Alis Akkors, an associate professor in the study author, molecular and mobile biology. "They make a unique opportunity to study the complete recovery of the complex sensory organ."
During the work, his team showed that the structure and genes of the development of people and snails are mostly the same. Moreover, for the first time, they used the editing method of the CrisPR / CAS9 genome and turned off the Pax6 gene, which is the eye key. Like people, its mutation led to the full loss of the full loss of snail embryos.
After the eye amputation, the snail takes about a month to restore it. During the first day, the wound improves, then the non-specialized cells are moved to the scene of the injury. One and a half weeks later, the eye structures began to form, and on the 15th day, all the main elements appear, including the visual nerve. However, they continue to ripen at least two weeks.
"Anatomically, the new eye is unknown to the old," the Akkori said.
It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.
The next goal of the team is to find out whether Pax6 is involved not only in the development of the eyes, but also in their recovery. If so, and if such genes are present in humans, it can open the doors to people for recovery methods.
"We hope that the understanding of the mechanism for recovering the snails will help activate similar processes to people," concluded Akkor.
Translation of: Euromedia24.com
