Some fish can regenerate their eyes. It turns out that mammals have the same genes.
In the future, gene-editing may be able to regenerate retinal tissue in humans and reverse age-related visual deterioration.
Blindness is caused by damage to the retina, which affects millions of people worldwide. The retina is unfortunately one of the only tissues that humans cannot grow back.
Other animals, such as the zebrafish, are able regenerate tissue which is so important to our ability to see. Scientists have discovered that we share 70 percent our genes with the tiny zebrafish. These genes are the ones which allow zebrafish to regenerate their retinas.
Seth Blackshaw, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, said that regeneration was the default state and that it had been lost multiple times on the evolutionary tree.
Source:
https://www.sciencealert.com/mammals-have-the-same-gene-pathways-that-let-zebrafish-grow-new-eyes
