GPCR – NIH Director's Blog (original) (raw)

A Ray of Molecular Beauty from Cryo-EM

Posted on September 20th, 2018 by Dr. Francis Collins

Credit: Subramaniam Lab, National Cancer Institute, NIH

Walk into a dark room, and it takes a minute to make out the objects, from the wallet on the table to the sleeping dog on the floor. But after a few seconds, our eyes are able to adjust and see in the near-dark, thanks to a protein called rhodopsin found at the surface of certain specialized cells in the retina, the thin, vision-initiating tissue that lines the back of the eye.

This illustration shows light-activating rhodopsin (orange). The light photons cause the activated form of rhodopsin to bind to its protein partner, transducin, made up of three subunits (green, yellow, and purple). The binding amplifies the visual signal, which then streams onward through the optic nerve for further processing in the brain—and the ability to avoid tripping over the dog.

Posted In: Snapshots of Life

Tags: cell biology, cell signaling, cryo-EM, drug development, eyes, G proteins, G-protein coupled receptors, GPCR, imaging, retina, retinitis pigmentosa, rhodopsin, structural biology, transducin, vision