Making molecular movies of vision

Abstract

For your eyes to read these words, they need to detect light. When light hits your retina, it initiates a cascade of signals and changes that connect your eye to the brain. A team of researchers in Switzerland have now used super quick pulses of laser light to capture some of the very first steps of that process ( Nature 2023, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05863-6 ). Inside the light detecting rod cells of the retina are light receptor proteins called rhodopsins. At the center of each rhodopsin protein is a small molecule, retinal. When light hits the retinal, that flips one double bond from a cis to trans conformation. That isomerization is just enough to trigger everything. But while researchers know the start and the end point, they haven’t been able to watch the switching process take place, until now. A team led by Valérie Panneels and Gebhard Schertler at the Paul