Membrane protein diffusion sets the speed of rod phototransduction

P. D. Calvert (), V. I. Govardovskii, N. Krasnoperova, R. E. Anderson, J. Lem and C. L. Makino
Additional contact information
P. D. Calvert: Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
V. I. Govardovskii: Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
N. Krasnoperova: Molecular Cardiology Research Institute, New England Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine
R. E. Anderson: Dean A McGee Eye Institute, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
J. Lem: Molecular Cardiology Research Institute, New England Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine
C. L. Makino: Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary

Nature, 2001, vol. 411, issue 6833, 90-94

Abstract: Abstract Retinal rods signal the activation of a single receptor molecule by a photon1. To ensure efficient photon capture, rods maintain about 109 copies of rhodopsin densely packed into membranous disks2. But a high packing density of rhodopsin may impede other steps in phototransduction that take place on the disk membrane3, by restricting the lateral movement of, and hence the rate of encounters between, the molecules involved4,5,6. Although it has been suggested that lateral diffusion of proteins on the membrane sets the rate of onset of the photoresponse7, it was later argued that the subsequent processing of the complexes was the main determinant of this rate8,9. The effects of protein density on response shut-off have not been reported. Here we show that a roughly 50% reduction in protein crowding achieved by the hemizygous knockout of rhodopsin in transgenic mice accelerates the rising phases and recoveries of flash responses by about 1.7-fold in vivo. Thus, in rods the rates of both response onset and recovery are set by the diffusional encounter frequency between proteins on the disk membrane.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35075083 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:411:y:2001:i:6833:d:10.1038_35075083

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35075083

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().