APLP2 protein tagged posts

This is an antibody-stained cross section of a mouse retina. Credit: Andrei Tkachenko/Columbia University Medical Center

Vision researchers have discovered a gene that causes myopia, but only in people who spend a lot of time in childhood reading or doing other ‘nearwork.’ Using a database of approximately 14,000 people, the researchers found that those with a certain variant of the gene – called APLP2 – were 5X more likely to develop myopia in their teens if they had read an hour or more each day in their childhood. Those who carried the APLP2 risk variant but spent less time reading had no additional risk of developing myopia.

This is the first known evidence of gene-environment interaction in myopia,” says Andrei Tkatchenko, MD, PhD, of CUMC...