Sight Test

You might be forgiven for thinking this image is of a worm but it's actually a magnified optic nerve. Nerves (neurons) are long cells and they have a sophisticated transport mechanism to move structures and biochemicals along their length. In neurodegenerative disorders, such as glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease, this transport mechanism is faulty. So, when the cell is damaged the neuron dies because the repair process is too slow. This causes the symptoms of the disorder. As a treatment, scientists are currently developing a promising combination gene therapy where two faulty genes are replaced. This will correct the transport mechanism allowing the neurons to be repaired. The image shows how the effectiveness of the treatment is measured in the lab. The green substance on the left is moving along an optic nerve. The dots, lines and blocks were added to act like a ruler to measure how far the substance moved.

Written by Julie Webb

Julie Webb

Writer

Julie began her career as a researcher in genetics. In 2000 she won a Wellcome Trust award for her work on a collaborative science drama, staged at the Edinburgh Festival. She now works as a freelance science writer and communicator.

• Image from work by Tasneem Z. Khatib and colleagues
• Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Science Advances, March 2021