A few years ago scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine inserted the gene for the human L -
type photopigment into mice.
Melanopsin is a member of the opsin family, and is more closely related to
photopigments in invertebrate visual cells than to pigments in vertebrate visual (rod and cone) cells.
Mice given a human
photopigment gene have better color discrimination than do their peers.
In the new experiment, vision scientist Gerald Jacobs at the University of California, Santa Barbara, teamed up with geneticist Jeremy Nathans at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, and other colleagues to add a
human photopigment gene to mice.
To find out, the biologists developed a way to incorporate the gene for the human L - type
photopigment into a small virus known as adeno - associated virus.
Certain differences in retina anatomy between primates and other mammals led many researchers to suspect that only primates had the right kind of wiring to make use of a sudden addition of a
third photopigment.
In one group of robins, the team removed cluster N, a brain region involved in processing signals from the «pair -
forming photopigments» in the eyes thought to relay magnetic compass information.
The researchers found that mammalian melanopsins possess a less stable bond with the chromophore retinal, a vitamin A derivative, than the closely
related photopigments.
Melanopsin (Opn4), an opsin -
based photopigment, is a primary candidate for photoreceptor - mediated entrainment.
Primates can distinguish the colors of the rainbow better than other mammals because their eyes contain three
photopigment proteins.
Electrical recordings from the retinas of the engineered mice indicated that the
added photopigment had enabled their color - sensing cone cells to respond to long wavelength red light, which normal mice can't see.
When Müller cells (marked with asterisks) were destroyed, cone cells quickly ran out
of photopigments and could not adapt to dark.
The irradiance output in the range of 380 — 780 nm at 4 - nm intervals was converted to 1 - nm intervals for calculation of the human
retinal photopigment illuminance measures (cyanopic, melanopic, rhodopic, chloropic, and erythropic lux)(35).
Twenty weeks later up to one third of the M - type cones in the animals» retinas had begun to express the L -
type photopigment.
Another is that there may be
photopigments in the eye called cryptochromes that detect the magnetic field chemically and provide a visual cue that an animal can use as a kind of compass.
The monkeys» new color awareness emerged as soon as
the photopigments were expressed in their retinas.
Among these primates, most females are trichromats, but the males are dichromats, possessing only the S - and M - type
photopigments.
About 8 percent of men, but fewer than 1 percent of women, have impoverished color vision, typically because they lack the gene for either the L - or the M - type
photopigment.
The reason color blindness is so much more common in boys and men is that the two genes for the L - and M - type
photopigments — the substances in cone cells that absorb light — are carried on the X chromosome.
Previous studies have revealed that
a photopigment melanopsin receives and transmits light signals in intrinsically photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), and the melanopsin - mediated light transmission plays an important role in non-visual photoreception of mammals.
Each photopigment is sensitive to light of a particular wavelength, and the primate visual system detects colors by comparing the relative activity of cells in the retina that bear each of the three photopigments.
Scientists have suggested that trichromatic color vision arose in primates when one of the two
photopigment genes they already had mutated to produce a third photopigment.
Most other mammals, however, only make two
photopigments, limiting their color discrimination.
This is because melanopsin —
a photopigment found in specialized cells of the retina involved in the regulation of circadian rhythms — is most sensitive to blue light.
According to Wikipedia,
the photopigment melanopsin «is found in some retinal ganglion cells in the eyes of humans and other vertebrates.