#opsins

New Molecular Insight On How the Eye Processes Light

An animal’s ability to perceive light incorporates many complex processes. Now, researchers in Craig Montell’s lab at UC Santa Barbara have used fruit flies and mice to make novel discoveries about sensory physiology at both cellular and molecular levels that are important for light processing. Their most recent findings improve the scientific understanding of the signaling cascade necessary for…

The octopus can change the color, pattern, and even texture of its skin not only for purposes of camouflage but also as a means of communication. The most intelligent, most mobile, and largest of all mollusks, these cephalopods use their almost humanlike eyes to send signals to pigmented organs in their skin called chromatophores, which expand and contract to alter their appearance. A new study…

Gene Therapy for Blind Mice Might Lead to Human Trials

When a mouse sees an owl, it scurries for cover as fast as it can to escape the back-breaking talons of the swooping owl. If the mouse has defective vision and cannot properly see the owl, then the mouse is simply doomed. So ingrained is this escape response into the psyche of mice, that simply showing laboratory mice a video of a swooping owl will send them off into various directions for…