For the first time, researchers have revealed that, in the eye lens, cells close to each other can sense when a cell is dying due to environmental stressors like UV light, smoke and other pollutants, and eat the cell before it becomes toxic.
The new study reveals that this happens with lens cells and the molecules that are required to do it. On the other hand, these molecules needed for the cells to eat each other are degraded by UV light. When that happens, the cells lose the ability to eat each other.
These systems are not confined to the eye lens and diseases of the eye. So discovering the mechanisms will offer useful information for complex tissues and diseases.
As we known that environmental damage is associated with cell death and that it kills tissue because it is toxic. The eye lens does not have a blood supply and is attacked by UV light and other stressors that continuously kill cells. So how does the eye lens preserve its transparent function? The researchers seek to understand it better.
They found that the intact eye lens is indeed capable of removing apoptopic lens cell debris. They worked to identify a molecular mechanism for this process by lens cells. By using the eye lens as a model, they searched to understand how other cells and tissues might operate in a different way than by using blood cells.
Accumulation of apoptopic material is toxic to epithelial cell populations, including the cornea, skin, lungs and other tissue. Furthermore, it's associated with the development of multiple autoimmune, inflammatory, aging and degenerative diseases. Uncovering the cell systems that protect against the effects of apoptosis or insults is an important step toward understanding and developing therapies to treat these diseases.
Using embryonic chicken lenses, they engineered the eye lens cells to be either fluorescent red or fluorescent green instead of what would normally be a clear lens cell. They created artificial dead green cells and fed them to the red cells. When the green cells ate the red cells, they turned yellow. They observed this mechanism in real-time using microscopy to track the digesting cells and utilized antibodies http://www.cusabio.com/catalog-14-1.html to specific molecules to determine which molecules were needed for the cells to eat each other.
The eye lens is one of the most environmentally challenged tissues of the body since it lacks protective pigmentation and resides just behind the transparent and surface exposed cornea. The new study may give promise to the development of treatments and therapies for cataract.
