Independent losses of visual perception genes Gja10 and Rbp3 in echolocating bats (Order: Chiroptera).

ABSTRACT: A trade-off between the sensory modalities of vision and hearing is likely to have occurred in echolocating bats as the sophisticated mechanism of laryngeal echolocation requires considerable neural processing and has reduced the reliance of echolocating bats on vision for perceiving the environment. If such a trade-off exists, it is reasonable to hypothesize that some genes involved in visual function may have undergone relaxed selection or even functional loss in echolocating bats. The Gap junction protein, alpha 10 (Gja10, encoded by Gja10 gene) is expressed abundantly in mammal retinal horizontal cells and plays an important role in horizontal cell coupling. The interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein (Irbp, encoded by the Rbp3 gene) is mainly expressed in interphotoreceptor matrix

SUBMITTER: Shen B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3715546 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature