Isolation and characterization of melanopsin and pinopsin expression within photoreceptive sites of reptiles

Frigato, Elena; Vallone, Daniela; Bertolucci, Cristiano; Foulkes, Nicholas S.

doi:10.1007/s00114-006-0119-9

Cited by 49 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Both C-type and R-type opsins exist in specialized photoreceptor cells associated with image-forming vision, as well as non-specialized cells in a variety of tissue locations (e.g. C-type Platynereis opsins and pinopsins in the brain [6,37]; R-type melanopsin in neuronal ganglion cells within the retina [38]). …”

Section: Functional Implications Of Opsin Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shedding new light on opsin evolution

et al. 2011

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Opsin proteins are essential molecules in mediating the ability of animals to detect and use light for diverse biological functions. Therefore, understanding the evolutionary history of opsins is key to understanding the evolution of light detection and photoreception in animals. As genomic data have appeared and rapidly expanded in quantity, it has become possible to analyse opsins that functionally and histologically are less well characterized, and thus to examine opsin evolution strictly from a genetic perspective. We have incorporated these new data into a large-scale, genome-based analysis of opsin evolution. We use an extensive phylogeny of currently known opsin sequence diversity as a foundation for examining the evolutionary distributions of key functional features within the opsin clade. This new analysis illustrates the lability of opsin protein-expression patterns, site-specific functionality (i.e. counterion position) and G-protein binding interactions. Further, it demonstrates the limitations of current model organisms, and highlights the need for further characterization of many of the opsin sequence groups with unknown function.

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Section: Functional Implications Of Opsin Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shedding new light on opsin evolution

et al. 2011

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“…The parietal eye exhibits a chromatic response to light mediated by different photopigments, such as short-, medium-and long-wavelengthsensitive opsins, rod opsin, pinopsin and parietopsin (Kawamura and Yokoyama, 1997;Frigato et al, 2006;Su et al, 2006). Electrophysiological studies carried out in the desert night lizard, Xantusia vigilis, and the common side-blotched lizard, Uta stansburiana, showed higher spectral sensitivity of their parietal eyes for both blue (short wavelengths) and green (medium wavelengths) light (Solessio and Engbretson, 1993;Solessio and Engbretson, 1999;Su et al, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lizard celestial compass detects linearly polarized light in the blue

Beltrami

Parretta

Petrucci

et al. 2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYThe present study first examined whether ruin lizards, Podarcis sicula, are able to orientate using plane-polarized light produced by an LCD screen. Ruin lizards were trained and tested indoors, inside a hexagonal Morris water maze positioned under an LCD screen producing white polarized light with a single E-vector, which provided an axial cue. White polarized light did not include wavelengths in the UV. Lizards orientated correctly either when tested with E-vector parallel to the training axis or after 90deg rotation of the E-vector direction, thus validating the apparatus. Further experiments examined whether there is a preferential region of the light spectrum to perceive the E-vector direction of polarized light. For this purpose, lizards reaching learning criteria under white polarized light were subdivided into four experimental groups. Each group was tested for orientation under a different spectrum of plane-polarized light (red, green, cyan and blue) with equalized photon flux density. Lizards tested under blue polarized light orientated correctly, whereas lizards tested under red polarized light were completely disoriented. Green polarized light was barely discernible by lizards, and thus insufficient for a correct functioning of their compass. When exposed to cyan polarized light, lizard orientation performances were optimal, indistinguishable from lizards detecting blue polarized light. Overall, the present results demonstrate that perception of linear polarization in the blue is necessary -and sufficient -for a proper functioning of the sky polarization compass of ruin lizards. This may be adaptively important, as detection of polarized light in the blue improves functioning of the polarization compass under cloudy skies, i.e. when the alternative celestial compass based on detection of the sun disk is rendered useless because the sun is obscured by clouds. Supplementary material available online at

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“…This suggests that there are other photosensitive pigments involved in irradiance detection, besides the visual opsins. Melanopsin, which is a light-sensitive pigment restricted to the RGCs of mammals (Provencio et al, 2000(Provencio et al, , 2002Pires et al, 2007Pires et al, , 2009Davies et al, 2010Davies et al, , 2012cDavies et al, , 2014Hankins et al, 2014), but expressed in a multitude of tissues in most, if not all, non-mammalian taxa (Provencio et al, 1998;Bellingham et al, 2002Bellingham et al, , 2006Drivenes et al, 2003;Jenkins et al, 2003;Chaurasia et al, 2005;Koyanagi et al, 2005;Frigato et al, 2006;Grone et al, 2007;Cheng et al, 2009;Davies et al, 2010Davies et al, , 2011Davies et al, , 2012bDavies et al, , 2014Davies et al, , 2015Hankins et al, 2014), is a likely candidate as it was initially identified in amphibian dermal melanophores (Provencio et al, 1998). Indeed, the vertebrate melanopsin signaling pathway is very similar to that utilized by invertebrate retinal and dermal opsins (Isoldi et al, 2005;Contin et al, 2006;Graham et al, 2008), although there are notable differences (Panda et al, 2005;Peirson and Foster, 2006;Hughes et al, 2012;Davies et al, 2014).…”

Section: Mechanisms Of Non-visual Light Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Biological Mechanisms and Behavioral Functions of Opsin-Based Light Detection by the Skin

Kelley

Davies

2016

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Light detection not only forms the basis of vision (via visual retinal photoreceptors), but can also occur in other parts of the body, including many non-rod/non-cone ocular cells, the pineal complex, the deep brain, and the skin. Indeed, many of the photopigments (an opsin linked to a light-sensitive 11-cis retinal chromophore) that mediate color vision in the eyes of vertebrates are also present in the skin of animals such as reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans and fishes (with related photoreceptive molecules present in cephalopods), providing a localized mechanism for light detection across the surface of the body. This form of non-visual photosensitivity may be particularly important for animals that can change their coloration by altering the dispersion of pigments within the chromatophores (pigment containing cells) of the skin. Thus, skin coloration may be directly color matched or "tuned" to both the luminance and spectral properties of the local background environment, thereby facilitating behavioral functions such as camouflage, thermoregulation, and social signaling. This review examines the diversity and sensitivity of opsin-based photopigments present in the skin and considers their putative functional roles in mediating animal behavior. Furthermore, it discusses the potential underlying biochemical and molecular pathways that link shifts in environmental light to both photopigment expression and chromatophore photoresponses. Although photoreception that occurs independently of image formation remains poorly understood, this review highlights the important role of non-visual light detection in facilitating the multiple functions of animal coloration.

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Isolation and characterization of melanopsin and pinopsin expression within photoreceptive sites of reptiles

Cited by 49 publications

References 28 publications

Shedding new light on opsin evolution

Shedding new light on opsin evolution

The lizard celestial compass detects linearly polarized light in the blue

The Biological Mechanisms and Behavioral Functions of Opsin-Based Light Detection by the Skin

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