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The flat worm could be beneficial in repairing debilitating eye diseases. A study has found that the planarian flatworm, which is able to recreate missing parts of its body, could hold the key to battling many debilitating eye diseases. Scientists have now decoded the full genome of the worm's eye that could play a major role for studying eye development and eye diseases. Scientists have analysed more than 2,000 planarian eyes, and found 600 active genes and studied 200 of them in detail. The most studied previous model for eye development were the compound eyes of fruit flies, as their genes are well documented.
Several of the identified planarian genes are known to have versions that play a role in the vertebrate eye but have not been found in the fruit fly eye. Among these are genes involved in eye development and others associated with age-related macular degeneration and Usher syndrome, a disorder that causes progressive retinal degradation, the report said. A key gene is the transcription factor ovo, which activates the expression of many other genes as the eye forms. When ovo is experimentally turned off, planarians with head amputations cannot regenerate their eyes and eyes of otherwise normal adult planarians vanish after a couple of months.
Source: IANS