Spectral tuning of deep red cone pigments.

ABSTRACT: Visual pigments are G-protein-coupled receptors that provide a critical interface between organisms and their external environment. Natural selection has generated vertebrate pigments that absorb light from the far-UV (360 nm) to the deep red (630 nm) while using a single chromophore, in either the A1 (11- cis-retinal) or A2 (11- cis-3,4-dehydroretinal) form. The fact that a single chromophore can be manipulated to have an absorption maximum across such an extended spectral region is remarkable. The mechanisms of wavelength regulation remain to be fully revealed, and one of the least well-understood mechanisms is that associated with the deep red pigments. We investigate theoretically the hypothesis that deep red cone pigments select a 6- s- trans conformation of the retinal chromophore ri

SUBMITTER: Amora TL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2492582 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature