Researchers play an important part in improving our current technology, actually they are the most important because they come up with ideas that could help us. A domain that many of them focus is medicine and a disease that they are looking to cure is blindness and a recent report shows that blind people could be treated with light-sensitive proteins found in unicellular algae.

These proteins are found in Chlamydomonas because they can orient themselves towards light to aid in photosynthesis. According to the study, the researchers managed to restore light-sense to blind mice using the light-sensitive proteins found in the unicellular algae.

The discovery was made by a group of researchers at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland and the leader of the study, Dr. Botond Roska, explained: “Imagine giving a speech to a large room of people, but only the first row can hear you”. The first row is represented by the light-sensing cells which have to send the information to the brain and he means that when the first layer is damaged, the eye becomes blind “like a camera with the cap on”.

The team of researchers tried to “turn up the volume of the speech” and the treatment worked fairly well. The scientists knew that as they placed two packs of mice, one with sight and one blind, in dark rooms and after a half an hour they turned the lights on. Before the treatment, the blind mice didn’t have any reaction to the light, but after the treatment with light-sensitive proteins, the mice acted almost like the sighted mice which means that they were able to distinguish between dark and light.

The results are very promising, but the researchers need to make some further tests in order to restore the functionality of a wider range of light receptors. Also, the scientists have to prove that the treatment is applicable to humans and the tests should show at least the same efficiency. Probably, this treatment could be the cure for blindness and sightless could soon have a normal life.