An FTIR Study of Monkey Green- and Red-Sensitive Visual Pigments

Kota Katayama, Yuji Furutani, Hiroo Imai and Hideki Kandori

Most vertebrates including primates have two kinds of vision: twilight vision mediated by rhodopsin in rod photoreceptor cells and color vision achieved by multiple color pigments in cone photoreceptor cells. Humans have three color pigments: red-, green-, and blue-sensitive proteins maximally absorbing at 560, 530, and425 nm, respectively, and specific perception of light by the red, green, blue (RGB) sensors is the origin of color vision. Rhodopsin and color-pigments both contain a common chromophore molecule, 11-cis retinal, whereas different chromophore–protein interactions allow preferential absorption of different colors. In this study, we attempted to large scale expression of monkey green and red pigments in HEK293 cell lines for structural analysis using FTIR spectroscopy.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123232958/abstract

Angewandte Chemie, on-line, 2010

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