How a snail’s eye may lead to cure for human blindness

The golden apple snail has powerful regenerative abilities — and its eyes share many anatomical features with ours

The golden apple snail is a freshwater species with the remarkable ability to regrow an entire eye — prompting scientists to ask whether it could one day inspire better treatments for sight loss.

A study published in Nature Communications has, for the first time, revealed apple snails and human eyes share many anatomical features.

A team led by Alice Accorsi, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, found that the snail’s eyes, like ours, have a camera-like structure with a lens, a retina and an optic nerve. Crucially, they also appear to use many of the same genes thought to be responsible for eye development in humans.