Photopigment
From Psychology Wiki
Community portal · Tasks to do · News · Help
Clinical · Educational · Ind&Org · Other fields · Professional · Transpersonal · World
Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language | Personality | Philosophy | Research Methods | Social | Statistics
Biological: Behavioural genetics · Evolutionary psychology · Neuroanatomy · Neurochemistry · Neuroendocrinology · Psychoneuroimmunology · Physiological Psychology · Psychopharmacology
Photopigments are unstable pigments that undergo a physical or chemical change in the presence of light. The term is generally applied to the non-protein chromophore moiety of photosensitive chromoproteins, such as the pigments involved in photosynthesis and photoreception. In medical terminology, "photopigment" commonly refers to the photoreceptor proteins of the retina.
[edit] Photoreceptor pigments
- Main article: Photoreceptor protein
The pigments in photoreceptor proteins either change their conformation or undergo photoreduction when they absorb a photon. This change in the conformation or redox state of the chromophore then affects the protein conformation or activity and triggers a signal transduction cascade. Examples for photoreceptor pigments include retinal (for example in rhodopsin), flavin (for example in cryptochrome), and bilin (for example in phytochrome).
[edit] Photopigments of the vertebrate retina
- Main article: Opsin
In medical terminology, the term photopigment is applied to opsin-type photoreceptor proteins, specifically rhodopsin and photopsins, the photoreceptor proteins in the retinal rods and cones of vertebrates that are responsible for visual perception, but also melanopsin and others.
[edit] See also
| This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Photopigment. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
