Retinal rhodopsin

Rhodopsin is a transmembrane protein linked to 11-c/s-retinal, which, on photoabsorption, decomposes to opsin and all-f/a/75-retinal. Rhodopsin has a molecular weight of about 40,000. Its C-terminus is exposed on the cytoplasmic surface of the disk, and its sugar-containing... 

Slowly, arrestin dissociates, rhodopsin is dephosphorylated, and all-frares-retinal is replaced with 11-cis-retinal. Rhodopsin is ready for another phototransduction cycle. 

The light-sensitive compound in rods is called rhodopsin. In 1952, Nobel Laureate George Wald (Harvard University) and his co-workers showed that the chromophore in rhodopsin is the conjugated polyunsaturated system of 11-cw-retinal. Rhodopsin is produced by a chemical reaction between 11 -ch-retinal and a protein called opsin. 

The distribution of rods and cones is shown in Figure 3b centered about the fovea, the area of the retina that has the highest concentration of cones with essentially no rods and also has the best resolving capabiUty, with a resolution about one minute of arc. The fovea is nominally taken as a 5° zone, with its central 1° zone designated the foveola. There are about 40 R and 20 G cones for each B cone in the eye as a whole, whereas in the fovea there are almost no B cones. A result of this is that color perception depends on the angle of the cone of light received by the eye. The extremely complex chemistry involved in the stimulation of opsin molecules, such as the rhodopsin of the rods, and the neural connections in the retinal pathway are well covered in Reference 21. 

FIGURE 18.36 The incorporation of retinal into the light-sensitive protein rhodopsin involves several steps. All- ram-retinol is oxidized by retinol dehydrogenase and then iso-merized to ll-cis-retinal, which forms a Schiff base linkage with opsin to form light-sensitive rhodopsin. 

Metarhodopsin 11 is then recycled back into rhodopsin by a multistep sequence involving cleavage to all-traws-retinal and cis-trans isomerization back to 11-ris-retinal. 

A number of diflFerent animal models of uveitis have been developed) including that induced by organ-specific ocular antigens such as retinal S-antigen, rhodopsin and lens protein (Wacker et al., 1977 Rao et al., 1979). Other models are based on the injection of proteins foreign to the host, such as intravitreal injections of albumin or 7-globulin (Zimmerman and Silverstein, 1959 Kaplan etal., 1979). More recently, a third group of models has been developed based on the injection of inflammatory mediators such as interleukins-1 and 2, and tumour necrosis factor (Bhattacherjee and Henderson, 1987 ... 

FIGURE 2.1 A side view of the structure of the prototype G-protein-coupled, 7TM receptor rhodopsin. The x-ray structure of bovine rhodopsin is shown with horizontal gray lines, indicating the limits of the cellular lipid membrane. The retinal ligand is shown in a space-filling model as the cloud in the middle of the structure. The seven transmembrane (7TM) helices are shown in solid ribbon form. Note that TM-III is rather tilted (see TM-III at the extracellular and intracellular end of the helix) and that kinks are present in several of the other helices, such as TM-V (to the left), TM-VI (in front of the retinal), and TM-VII. In all of these cases, these kinks are due to the presence of a well-conserved proline residue, which creates a weak point in the helical structure. These kinks are believed to be of functional importance in the activation mechanism for 7TM receptors in general. Also note the amphipathic helix-VIII which is located parallel to the membrane at the membrane interface. 

Binding of these ligands does not occur in a concave groove located on the surface of the receptor protein as otherwise often imagined. As described in Section 2.2.1, the x-ray structure of rhodopsin showed that retinal is bound deep in the seven-helical structure with major interaction points in TM-III and TM-VI, as well as the covalent attachment point in TM-VII. In fact, rhodopsin interacts with basically all transmembrane segments. Importantly, side-chains from the transmembrane helices cover the retinal molecule on all sides, and its binding site is found deep in the middle of... 

Migani A, Sinicropi A, Ferr N, Cembran A, Garavelli M, Olivucci M (2004) Structure of the intersection space associated with Z/E photoisomerization of retinal in rhodopsin proteins. Faraday discuss 127 179... 

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