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OPN4
Melanopsin is a type of photopigment belonging to a larger family of light-sensitive retinal proteins called opsins and encoded by the gene ''Opn4''. In the mammalian retina, there are two additional categories of opsins, both involved in the formation of visual images: rhodopsin and photopsin (types I, II, and III) in the rod and cone photoreceptor cells, respectively. In humans, melanopsin is found in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). It is also found in the iris of mice and primates. Melanopsin is also found in rats, amphioxus, and other chordates. ipRGCs are photoreceptor cells which are particularly sensitive to the absorption of short-wavelength (blue) visible light and communicate information directly to the area of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), also known as the central "body clock", in mammals. Melanopsin plays an important non-image-forming role in the setting of circadian rhythms as well as other functions. Mutations in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melanopsin In Retina
Melanopsin is a type of photopigment belonging to a larger family of light-sensitive retinal proteins called opsins and encoded by the gene ''Opn4''. In the mammalian retina, there are two additional categories of opsins, both involved in the formation of visual images: rhodopsin and photopsin (types I, II, and III) in the rod and cone photoreceptor cells, respectively. In humans, melanopsin is found in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). It is also found in the iris of mice and primates. Melanopsin is also found in rats, amphioxus, and other chordates. ipRGCs are photoreceptor cells which are particularly sensitive to the absorption of short-wavelength (blue) visible light and communicate information directly to the area of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), also known as the central "body clock", in mammals. Melanopsin plays an important non-image-forming role in the setting of circadian rhythms as well as other functions. Mutations in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opsin
Animal opsins are G-protein-coupled receptors and a group of proteins made light-sensitive via a chromophore, typically retinal. When bound to retinal, opsins become Retinylidene proteins, but are usually still called opsins regardless. Most prominently, they are found in photoreceptor cells of the retina. Five classical groups of opsins are involved in Visual perception, vision, mediating the conversion of a photon of light into an electrochemical signal, the first step in the Visual phototransduction, visual transduction cascade. Another opsin found in the mammalian retina, melanopsin, is involved in circadian rhythms and Pupillary light reflex, pupillary reflex but not in vision. Humans have in total nine opsins. Beside vision and light perception, opsins may also sense temperature, sound, or chemicals. Structure and function Animal opsins detect light and are the molecules that allow us to see. Opsins are G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which are chemoreceptors and hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photopigment
Photopigments are unstable pigments that undergo a chemical change when they absorb 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. Photosynthetic pigments Photosynthetic pigments convert light into biochemical energy. Examples for photosynthetic pigments are chlorophyll, carotenoids and phycobilins. These pigments enter a high-energy state upon absorbing a photon which they can release in the form of chemical energy. This can occur via light-driven pumping of ions across a biological membrane (e.g. in the case of the proton pump bacteriorhodopsin) or via excitation and transfer of electrons released by photolysis (e.g. in the photosystems of the thylakoid membranes of plant chloroplasts). In chloroplasts, the light-driven electron transfer chain in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ortholog
Sequence homology is the biological homology between DNA, RNA, or protein sequences, defined in terms of shared ancestry in the evolutionary history of life. Two segments of DNA can have shared ancestry because of three phenomena: either a speciation event (orthologs), or a duplication event (paralogs), or else a horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer event (xenologs). Homology among DNA, RNA, or proteins is typically inferred from their nucleotide or amino acid sequence similarity. Significant similarity is strong evidence that two sequences are related by evolutionary changes from a common ancestral sequence. Alignments of multiple sequences are used to indicate which regions of each sequence are homologous. Identity, similarity, and conservation The term "percent homology" is often used to mean "sequence similarity”, that is the percentage of identical residues (''percent identity''), or the percentage of residues conserved with similar physicochemical properties ('' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paralogous Genes
Sequence homology is the biological homology between DNA, RNA, or protein sequences, defined in terms of shared ancestry in the evolutionary history of life. Two segments of DNA can have shared ancestry because of three phenomena: either a speciation event (orthologs), or a duplication event (paralogs), or else a horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer event (xenologs). Homology among DNA, RNA, or proteins is typically inferred from their nucleotide or amino acid sequence similarity. Significant similarity is strong evidence that two sequences are related by evolutionary changes from a common ancestral sequence. Alignments of multiple sequences are used to indicate which regions of each sequence are homologous. Identity, similarity, and conservation The term "percent homology" is often used to mean "sequence similarity”, that is the percentage of identical residues (''percent identity''), or the percentage of residues conserved with similar physicochemical properties ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pineal Gland
The pineal gland, conarium, or epiphysis cerebri, is a small endocrine gland in the brain of most vertebrates. The pineal gland produces melatonin, a serotonin-derived hormone which modulates sleep, sleep patterns in both circadian rhythm, circadian and Season, seasonal cycles. The shape of the gland resembles a pine cone, which gives it its name. The pineal gland is located in the epithalamus, near the center of the brain, between the two cerebral hemisphere, hemispheres, tucked in a groove where the two halves of the thalamus join. The pineal gland is one of the neuroendocrinology, neuroendocrine Circumventricular organs, secretory circumventricular organs in which capillaries are mostly Vascular permeability, permeable to solutes in the blood. Nearly all vertebrate species possess a pineal gland. The most important exception is a primitive vertebrate, the hagfish. Even in the hagfish, however, there may be a "pineal equivalent" structure in the dorsal diencephalon. The lanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iris (anatomy)
In humans and most mammals and birds, the iris (plural: ''irides'' or ''irises'') is a thin, annular structure in the eye, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil, and thus the amount of light reaching the retina. Eye color is defined by the iris. In optical terms, the pupil is the eye's aperture, while the iris is the diaphragm. Structure The iris consists of two layers: the front pigmented fibrovascular layer known as a stroma and, beneath the stroma, pigmented epithelial cells. The stroma is connected to a sphincter muscle (sphincter pupillae), which contracts the pupil in a circular motion, and a set of dilator muscles ( dilator pupillae), which pull the iris radially to enlarge the pupil, pulling it in folds. The sphincter pupillae is the opposing muscle of the dilator pupillae. The pupil's diameter, and thus the inner border of the iris, changes size when constricting or dilating. The outer border of the iris does not change size. The constricti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exons
An exon is any part of a gene that will form a part of the final mature RNA produced by that gene after introns have been removed by RNA splicing. The term ''exon'' refers to both the DNA sequence within a gene and to the corresponding sequence in RNA transcripts. In RNA splicing, introns are removed and exons are covalently joined to one another as part of generating the mature RNA. Just as the entire set of genes for a species constitutes the genome, the entire set of exons constitutes the exome. History The term ''exon'' derives from the expressed region and was coined by American biochemist Walter Gilbert in 1978: "The notion of the cistron… must be replaced by that of a transcription unit containing regions which will be lost from the mature messengerwhich I suggest we call introns (for intragenic regions)alternating with regions which will be expressedexons." This definition was originally made for protein-coding transcripts that are spliced before being translated. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intron
An intron is any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is not expressed or operative in the final RNA product. The word ''intron'' is derived from the term ''intragenic region'', i.e. a region inside a gene."The notion of the cistron .e., gene... must be replaced by that of a transcription unit containing regions which will be lost from the mature messenger – which I suggest we call introns (for intragenic regions) – alternating with regions which will be expressed – exons." (Gilbert 1978) The term ''intron'' refers to both the DNA sequence within a gene and the corresponding RNA sequence in RNA transcripts. The non-intron sequences that become joined by this RNA processing to form the mature RNA are called exons. Introns are found in the genes of most organisms and many viruses and they can be located in both protein-coding genes and genes that function as RNA (noncoding genes). There are four main types of introns: tRNA introns, group I introns, group II introns, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chromosome 10
Chromosome 10 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. People normally have two copies of this chromosome. Chromosome 10 spans about 133 million base pairs (the building material of DNA) and represents between 4 and 4.5 percent of the total DNA in cell (biology), cells. Genes Number of genes The following are some of the gene count estimates of human chromosome 10. Because researchers use different approaches to genome annotation their predictions of the number of genes on each chromosome varies (for technical details, see gene prediction). Among various projects, the collaborative consensus coding sequence project (Consensus CDS Project, CCDS) takes an extremely conservative strategy. So CCDS's gene number prediction represents a lower bound on the total number of human protein-coding genes. Gene list The following is a partial list of genes on human chromosome 10. For complete list, see the link in the infobox on the right. Diseases and disorders The following dise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samer Hattar
Samer Hattar ( ar, سامر حتر) is a chronobiologist and a leader in the field of non-image forming photoreception. He is the Chief of the Section on Light and Circadian Rhythms at the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health. He was previously an associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He is best known for his investigation into the role of melanopsin and intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGC) in the entrainment of circadian rhythms. Life Samer Hattar was born in Amman, Jordan to a Jordanian father and a Lebanese mother. Raised in a Christian family, he planned on becoming a priest. He studied at Terra Sancta High School, a Catholic high school in Amman, from 1978 to 1988. He earned good grades in his classes and fell in love with biology when introduced to Mendel's pea plant experiments. This passion inspired him to pursue a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retinal Ganglion Cells
A retinal ganglion cell (RGC) is a type of neuron located near the inner surface (the ganglion cell layer) of the retina of the eye. It receives visual information from photoreceptors via two intermediate neuron types: bipolar cells and retina amacrine cells. Retina amacrine cells, particularly narrow field cells, are important for creating functional subunits within the ganglion cell layer and making it so that ganglion cells can observe a small dot moving a small distance. Retinal ganglion cells collectively transmit image-forming and non-image forming visual information from the retina in the form of action potential to several regions in the thalamus, hypothalamus, and mesencephalon, or midbrain. Retinal ganglion cells vary significantly in terms of their size, connections, and responses to visual stimulation but they all share the defining property of having a long axon that extends into the brain. These axons form the optic nerve, optic chiasm, and optic tract. A small pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
