Photoreceptor cells in our eyes can adjust to both weak and strong light levels, but we still don't know exactly how they do it. Emeritus Professor Fumio Hayashi of Kobe University and his colleagues ...

A group of researchers discovered that the rhodopsin -- a protein in the eye that detects light -- of whale sharks has changed to efficiently detect blue light, which penetrates deep-sea water easily.

It is almost ten years since the scientific journal Science called optogenetics the "breakthrough of the decade". Put simply, the technique makes it possible to control the electrical activity of ...

This image shows the structure of rhodopsin embedded in a membrane. The red structure in the middle is the retinal chromophore responsible for absorbing visible light. (Image credit: Kiser et al., ...

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, working with Spanish, French and German colleagues, have determined and analyzed the high-resolution structure of a protein from the ...

A new, ultrafast raman spectroscopy method has given researchers a glimpse of the early stages of the vision process. Vision is jump-started by the isomerization of the retinal chromophore in ...

In a new study at University of California, Irvine, researchers have revealed the impact of native lipids on rhodopsin signaling and regeneration, which may usher in a new paradigm for discovery of ...

Seeing starts in the rods and cones, two different types of sensory cells in the retina of the eye. The rods are responsible for dark vision and are particularly sensitive to light as a result. A ...

Any living organism that directly harnesses the sun's energy uses one of three types of energy-converting pigments: chlorophyll, which gives plants their green color, bacteriochlorophyll, or retinal ...

Photoreceptor cells in our eyes can adjust to both weak and strong light levels, but we still don't know exactly how they do it. Researchers now revealed that the photoreceptor protein rhodopsin forms ...