Human blindness could be cured utilizing Zebrafish's capability to regenerate its retina

Researchers are looking into how a unique characteristic of a zebrafish can regenerate retinas in humans and keep people seeing as they age.

Zebrafish might be tiny, but they come with some supersized powers. But unlike mammals, they are able to regenerate parts of their retina if they become injured. That is why researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center are studying how this characteristic of zebrafish can help humans dealing with age-related vision loss due to damage to the retina.

The cells that make up the retina between the fish and the human eye are very, very similar. The exception is one cell called Muller glia. In a zebrafish, when that cell is damaged, it will activate and then regenerate. Humans have the same Muller glia cell but are incapable of regeneration like the zebrafish.

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The research will focus on using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR, genome-editing techniques to explore how zebrafish regenerate the retinal cells that receive light and start the visual process. The team led by Dr. Scott Taylor has used CRISPR to create zebrafish without MiR-18a, a molecule that regulates regeneration in the eye, to see how their vision recovers in its absence. Fish without this molecule was found to have an exaggerated regeneration response. They produce more new cells and photoreceptors than normal fish would. The scientists think this process is critical for regulating retinal regeneration.

Interestingly, the zebrafish is used often to study human traits and diseases because they share 70% of humans' genetic code.

Before human testing, this research will have to test on smaller mammals, such as mice, and see if they can suppress a particular mirco-RNA that regulates the Muller glia cell.

Sources: 1 2 

Academic paper in Cell Reports. 

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