21/11/2025
When Accorsi snipped off a snail’s eye, the eye grew back in just under a month. But it probably took about three months for the new eye to fully integrate with the brain to restore full vision, Sánchez Alvarado says. Humans don’t regrow damaged eye parts and certainly not a whole eye. Even a transplanted eye has not yet
successfully wired into a recipient’s brain. Discovering the basis of eye regeneration in snails won’t lead to immediate cures for people, says Henry Klassen, an ophthalmologist and stem cell researcher at the University of California, Irvine, who wasn’t involved in the work. But knowing that it is possible to regenerate eyes can be “like a beacon of light,” he says. “You can at least start asking questions like, ‘Where’s the hang-up? How far along the similar path do things go [in humans], and what genes, for instance, intervene or have been added to suppress [regeneration], or fail to respond?’”
Snails have other genes known to be important in human eye development. The secret to regenerating eyes is probably in the molecular switches that control when those genes are active, the researchers say. It’s possible that humans already have the same switches and researchers would just need to activate them at the right time and place to regenerate eyes, Accorsi says. Or regeneration may be controlled by a switch or switches that snails have, and humans don’t.
By Caron, Member Support.
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