Gene therapy cures colour-blind monkeys - health - 16 September 2009 - New ScientistTwo colour-blind monkeys nicknamed Dalton and Sam have been "cured" through gene therapy.
The breakthrough could be a prelude to new gene treatments for human vision disorders that currently result in blindness. And because the treated monkeys were "middle aged", it challenges the assumption that gene therapies cannot work in adults because their brain connections are too set in their ways to change beneficially.
A human gene injected into the monkeys' eyes enabled them for the first time to produce Clong-wavelength opsin" the pigment sensitive to red and green light. "That gave them a retina like that of a normal person with full colour vision," says Jay Neitz at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The team used squirrel monkeys because the males are known to be colour-blind, whereas females have full colour vision. Males do have a full set of colour-sensing "cone" cells in their eyes, but they only make pigments for detecting blue and yellow light, making them blind to red and green.
Shared via AddThis
Posts
you have a very interesting blog :)
ReplyDeleteGracias hombre! Many speak but few hear!
ReplyDelete