Bizarre eyeball transplant allows tadpoles to see out of their tails

Get ready for custom eyeball transplants for people who absolutely must have eyes in the backs of their heads — or pretty much anywhere on their bodies. Researchers at Tufts University just published a paper where they report transplanting working eyes onto the tail of a blind tadpole. Here's how they did it.

Xenopus tadpoles arise from a genus of frogs native to Sub-Saharan Africa. Within this genus of aquatic frogs is Xenopus laevis, better known as the African clawed frog. To carry out the study, researchers at Tufts removed the eyes from several Xenopus tadpoles used in testing. Then they transplanted a primordial eye harvested from an embryonic tadpole onto the tail of the newly-blind tadpoles. Positioning the eye on the tail was important, because it contains the nerve-heavy spine.

source -- http://io9.com/5987132/bizarre-eyeball-transplant-allows-tadpoles-to-see-out-of-their-tails?tag=medicine