Light of Joy
Blue light to treat diabetes
A light-sensitive protein from the retina can be manipulated to help treat diabetes or other metabolic diseases
Attention, shoppers: The latest blue light special could help combat diabetes and some genetic diseases. Scientists have harnessed a light-gathering protein usually found in the eye to turn on the production of a protein that controls blood sugar. Researchers in Switzerland and France rigged kidney cells to make the blood-sugar control protein when exposed to blue light and then implanted diabetic mice with tiny capsules containing the engineered cells. Shining a blue light directly on the mice's skin or through an implanted optical fiber brought blood sugar levels back to normal, the team reports in the June 24 Science. The new technique could be used to spur the manufacture of proteins lacking in patients with rare genetic diseases such as phenylketonuria, in which an inability to make an enzyme can lead to brain damage. Modified versions of the system might also help scientists figure out which biochemical processes are going haywire in a wide variety of diseases, Boyden speculates. Conceptually, the system is simple. Researchers start with human embryonic kidney cells engineered to make a protein called melanopsin and then insert a gene for whatever other protein they want to produce into the cells. Melanopsin is a light-harvesting protein normally found in the retina of the eye. It responds to blue light and sets off a biochemical chain reaction that sends nerve signals to the brain. Instead of sending nerve signals, the scientists harnessed a chain reaction already present in kidney cells to turn on the inserted gene. In the new study, shining a blue light on the melanopsin-carrying kidney cells turns on production of a protein called glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1. That protein, in turn, governs production of insulin and other proteins that help control blood sugar levels.
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