Nature Neurosci. doi: 10.1038/nn.2117 (2008)

Blind mice that had lost all the light receptors in their retinae have had their vision partly restored thanks to a light-sensitive ion channel from a green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

Botond Roska of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, and his colleagues inserted the gene for this ion channel into the DNA of specific mouse retinal cells, the ON bipolar cells. Formerly blind mice with these cells gained rudimentary sight because light opened algal ion channels in the modified retinal neurons, allowing positively charged ions to flood in and a signal to be sent to the visual region of the brain. The mice fled from strong light and responded to moving grid patterns.