Snails, Sea Silk, & The War on Bugs. Plus: Our Sci-Fi Future

🐌 Snail Vision: A Potential Path to Sight Regeneration

Consider the humble snail. These oddly adorable slowpokes may eat holes in your garden’s greens, but it turns out they may be useful for modeling human eye development. Science News’s Tina Hesman Saey reported how one invasive snail species may possess the key to ocular regeneration in people.

👁 The Golden Apple of Your Eye

You may have seen the freshwater golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata) chilling at the bottom of a fish tank. These little guys are actually one of the world’s most invasive species, and developmental biologist Alice Accorsi sought to understand the key to their survival.

She found that part of their secret is the ability to regenerate body parts, including their eyes. While this power isn’t unique to golden apple snails, their eyes have a lens, cornea and retina like humans’. Moreover, these critters require the same gene people do to grow eyes, which could help scientists locate the molecular switches involved in both human and snail eye growth.

In just a few years, Accorsi, who is an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Davis, has propelled these gastropods toward becoming laboratory stand-ins for human eyes — a feat that usually takes much longer.