Kinetics of rhodopsin deactivation and its role in regulating recovery and reproducibility of rod photoresponse.

ABSTRACT: The single photon response (SPR) in vertebrate phototransduction is regulated by the dynamics of R* during its lifetime, including the random number of phosphorylations, the catalytic activity and the random sojourn time at each phosphorylation level. Because of this randomness the electrical responses are expected to be inherently variable. However the SPR is highly reproducible. The mechanisms that confer to the SPR such a low variability are not completely understood. The kinetics of rhodopsin deactivation is investigated by a Continuous Time Markov Chain (CTMC) based on the biochemistry of rhodopsin activation and deactivation, interfaced with a spatio-temporal model of phototransduction. The model parameters are extracted from the photoresponse data of both wild type and mutant mice,

SUBMITTER: Caruso G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3002991 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature