Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other SIGHT!

Although crossing the road is the last thing blind chickens should be doing, scientists at the University of Abertay in Dundee have identified the genetic mutation causing blindness and predisposition to embryonic death in chickens. Retinopathy globe enlarged (RGE) is an inherited condition causing blindness in chickens six to eight weeks after hatching. Biotechnologist Dr Doug Lester and PhD student Hemanth Tummala working with colleagues from Leeds University and Ediburgh’s Roslin Institute have identified mutation of the gene GNB3 to be the cause of RGE. The mutation deletes an essential amino acid, disrupting GNB3’s role in normal eye development. This finding has implications not just for poultry road-safety, but rather is anticipated to assist understanding of a wide range of human disorders including blindness, heart disease, diabetes and even infant mortality.

“Interestingly the human GNB3 gene has not been previously implicated in retinal dystrophy, however a much milder human mutation has been shown to reduce the level of the GNB3 protein by 50% in many tissues of the body and this has been associated with low birth weight, obesity, hypertension, coronary heart disease, type II diabetes and depression,” Dr Lester said. Such finding are expected to play a significant role in discovering the pathogenesis of such diseases, developing gene therapy processes and even restoring sight to sufferers of the inherited human eye disorder cone-rod dystrophy.

Restoring sight to the blind? Now that’s not something to be overlooked.


Primary Resource:

Tummala, H., Ali, M., Getty, P., Hocking, P.M., Burt, D.W., Inglehearn, C.F, Lester, D.H., 2006. Mutation in the Guanine Nucleotide–Binding Protein ß-3 Causes Retinal Degeneration and Embryonic Mortality in Chickens. Investigative Opthamology and Visual Science, 47, 4714-4718.
http://www.iovs.org/cgi/content/full/47/11/4714

Secondary Resources:

Medical News Today, 2006. Chicken Blindness Gene Could Hold Key To Many Human Diseases.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/59198.php. Accessed 23 May 2008.

BBC News, 2006. Chicken gene ‘clue to conditions’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/6216774.stm. Accessed 23 May 2008.