Eye to the Sky: Bioengineering & Sight


As a tornado chaser, some of the most valuable tools in your arsenal are your eyes. Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional, being able to identify a storm the moment it forms is crucial as you rush to be the first on the scene and stay out of harm’s way. You need to be able to clearly make out the clouds in the sky and the tornadoes in the distance, and bioengineering can help with that.


One of these views makes for a happy tornado chaser. The other may make for a dead one.

(Source: Modified from Pixabay)

We’ve all seen glasses and contacts, but imagine if we could go further. What if we could correct our vision, or even augment it beyond normal human capabilities? These possibilities all lie in the purview of the bioengineer.

Many advances have already been made in restoring vision through bioengineering research. In the event of a damaged cornea (the front part of your eye), you might be thinking your career of storm chasing is over. Thanks to bioengineers, however, synthetic replacements are already available, and getting better every day. 

For example, take the work of Behnaz Aghaei-Ghareh-Bolaghet. al, published in the journal Biomaterials in January 2019. While synthetic corneas have been available for awhile, the team was able to study the eye and engineer a better, more robust kind of film to assist in regrowth.

By removing the damaged part of the eye and replacing it with a bioengineered synthetic film, we can promote regrowth and restore vision.
(Source: Aghaei-Ghareh-Bolagh et. al.)

As the recency of this research shows, the field is far from mature, and future advancements are likely to follow. For tornado chasers who rely so much on our vision to spot, chase, and observe tornadoes, the possibilities posed by bioengineering research is very promising.  Stay tuned, and be sure to check out journals like Biomaterials or ask your ophthalmologist to see how the latest science can help your chase and your vision!

Citations:

Aghaei-Ghareh-Bolagh, B., Guan, J., Wang, Y., Martin, A. D., Dawson, R., Mithieux, S. M., & Weiss, A. S. (2019). Optically robust, highly permeable and elastic protein films that support dual cornea cell types. Biomaterials, 188, 50–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2018.10.006 

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