Spectral tuning mediated by helix III in butterfly long wavelength-sensitive visual opsins revealed by heterologous action spectroscopy.

ABSTRACT: Absorption spectra of opsin-based pigments are tuned from the UV to the red regions by interactions of the chromophore with surrounding amino acid residues. Both vertebrates and invertebrates possess long-wavelength-sensitive (LWS) opsins, which underlie color vision involving "red" sensing. The LWS opsins have independently evolved in each lineage, which suggests the existence of diverse mechanisms in spectral tuning. In vertebrate LWS opsins, the mechanisms underlying spectral tuning have been well characterized by spectroscopic analyses with recombinant pigments of wild type (WT) and mutant opsins. However in invertebrate LWS opsins including insect ones, the mechanisms are largely unknown due to the difficulty in obtaining recombinant pigments. Here we have overcome the problem by anal

SUBMITTER: Saito T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6915953 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature