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Returning sight to those for whom it’s slipped away has been a goal of scientists for decades. But repairing or replacing the delicate internal machinery of the human eye has proven difficult so far. A few experimental devices have managed to grant low-resolution sight to the blind, but most require the use of bulky electronics and external power sources.
But researchers from Fudan University and the University of Science and Technology of China say that they’ve come up with a more elegant solution to curing some forms of blindness. They simply swapped out dead photoreceptors in the eyes of blind mice — the rods and cones that produce electrical signals when hit by photons — with artificial versions made of gold and titanium oxide.
The human-designed photoreceptors take the form of nanowires studded with tiny gold flakes, which help tune the array to respond to light in ...
