Microbial
rhodopsins are photoreceptive membrane proteins of microorganisms
that express diverse photobiological functions. All-trans-retinylidene Schiff base, the so-called all-trans-retinal, is a chromophore of microbial rhodopsins, which captures
photons. It isomerizes into the 13-cis form upon
photoexcitation. Isomerization of retinal leads to sequential conformational
changes in the protein, giving rise to active states that exhibit
biological functions. Despite the rapidly expanding diversity of microbial
rhodopsin functions, the photochemical behaviors of retinal were considered
to be common among them. However, the retinal of many recently discovered
rhodopsins was found to exhibit new photochemical characteristics,
such as highly red-shifted absorption, isomerization to 7-cis and 11-cis forms, and energy transfer
from a secondary carotenoid chromophore to the retinal, which is markedly
different from that established in canonical microbial rhodopsins.
Here, I review new aspects of retinal found in novel microbial rhodopsins
and highlight the emerging problems that need to be addressed to understand
noncanonical retinal photochemistry.