Rhodopsin is the first G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) with its three-dimensional structure solved by X-ray crystallography. The crystal structure of rhodopsin has revealed the molecular mechanism ...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

A team of biophysicists from Russia, Germany, and France, featuring researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, has discovered and studied the structure of the KR2 rhodopsin under ...

A research group including Professors Mitsumasa Koyanagi and Akihisa Terakita of the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Science has investigated both the genetic information and ...