The Hello, Hello and this week how we could use bacteria to repair concrete the invisibility

cloak for your pets and on top of the world what happens to our bodies when we climb

Mount Everest. If you'd like to get in touch with us here at the naked scientists email Chris at the naked

scientists dot com tweet at naked scientists or look us up on our Facebook page Facebook

dot com slash the naked scientist the naked scientist is powered by

UK fast dot co-dot UK.

K. For so First though, let's take a look at what's been happening in the world of science with science

news headlines and kicking off I've got a story all about eyes. One of the big goals of vision restoration is really how we can

do gene therapy to stop degenerative diseases of the eye which are very common. Things

like retinal degeneration secondary to

macular degeneration is a very common condition. Maybe 20-30% of people over the age

of 60 might be developing this. We think we might be able to prevent some of these

conditions by using vectors to put genes

into the cells in the retina that break down during these diseases to protect them.

One problem though is getting good vectors that can do this. Scientists have had some limited

success by using viruses including one type of virus called an adenot-associated virus that

the numbers of cells that they're able to reach like this have been

fairly limited and they also tend to cause inflammation in the eye when they do this.

But there's a very encouraging paper it's in science translational medicine this

week by David Schaefer and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley and they have used evolution effectively to help them to do this better.

So they have taken an adenoc associated virus. They inject this virus into experimental

animals into their eyes. Then they go in a few days later and they collect the virus just

...