United States: Scientists at the NIH and other institutions have found a protein called RNF114 that helps to restore vision in patients with cataracts – the process of lens clouding that affects many individuals as they grow older.
More about the news
The surgery-free process demonstrated in the 13-lined ground squirrel and rats may be a new possible therapy for cataracts and consequent vision impairment. This work was reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
How was the discovery made?
This new discovery was made during research at the NIH’s National Eye Institute on a mammalian hibernator, the 13-lined ground squirrel.
Ground squirrels have the majority of photoreceptor cells in the retina as cones, which makes ground squirrels useful in studying cone properties such as color vision.
Furthermore, the long periods of cold and metabolic stress that a squirrel goes through while in hibernation make it an ideal model on which vision scientists can conduct research on different eye diseases.
What have the scientists found?
From their observations, researchers discovered that the lenses in the ground squirrel’s eyes became opaque at about 4 degrees Celsius while it emerged transparent after rewarming.
Non-hibernators, as opposed to hibernators, developed cataracts at low temperatures, and the changes did not revert with rewarming, all this in the case of rats.
Thus, cataracts in hibernating animals must be considered as the result of cold stress at low temperatures and one of the characteristic changes in the cellular structure as tissues and cells of hibernating animals prepare to tolerate freezing and low metabolic rates.
It is primarily concerned with the vital function of gathering light and focusing the same on the retina within the eye.
Cataracts occurs when proteins in the lens begin to be malformed by clumping together and interfering, dispersing, or bending light as it goes through the lens as one grows old.
It is not quite understood why aging leads to the dysregulation of protein homeostasis, which is the process of maintaining the balance of newly synthesized proteins and the degradation of proteins within the body.