Scientists at University of California San Diego found a new way to help the surgeons to avoid the patients nerves during surgeries, till today the surgeons avoid the nerves by their experience gained and their own knowledge of the human body and the use of electromyographic monitoring to know where exactly are the nerves and avoid harming them.
Because that can’t be so accurate and because a slight damage to thin or buried nerves during surgery can have severe consequences, that can reach up to permanent paralysis. So if the new material succeeded when tested in humans it will be a great progress in lots of surgeries fields.
The scientists have found a way to make the nerves fluorescent lighted when exposed to a certain light.
The new material is a sequence of amino acids that stick to nerve cells, then designed fluorescent probe to the peptide to serve a nerve-specific tag, so they were able to create a beacon that illuminates nerves under a certain wavelength of light. When the scientists injected the material into the bloodstream of mice, all of the peripheral nerves were labeled within two hours, the labeling lasted for several hours and was gone completely after a day.