Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Yokoyama S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2572076 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Mar-Apr
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Yokoyama Shozo S Tada Takashi T Yamato Takahisa T
Photochemistry and photobiology 20070301 2
Vision begins when light is absorbed by visual pigments. It is commonly believed that the absorption spectra of visual pigments are modulated by interactions between the retinal and amino acids within or near 4.5 angstroms of the retinal in the transmembrane (TM) segments. However, this dogma has not been rigorously tested. In this study, we show that the retinal-opsin interactions extend well beyond the retinal binding pocket. We found that, although it is positioned outside of TM segments, the ...[more]