Latest Rod cell Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A group of researchers from Brown University have demonstrated that certain skin cells use a light-sensitive receptor found outside of the eye to detect ultraviolet light and quickly begin producing melanin to prevent DNA damage. The same team, in a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has identified a key player in that biomolecular chain of events that could become a pharmacological target for...
On the road at night or on a tennis court at dusk, the eye can be deceived. Vision is not as sharp as in the light of day, and detecting a bicyclist on the road or a careening tennis ball can be tough. New research reveals the key chemical process that corrects for potential visual errors in low-light conditions. Understanding this fundamental step could lead to new treatments for visual deficits, or might one day boost normal night vision to new levels. Like the mirror of a telescope...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is a condition that generally occurs in people over the age of 50, but also occurs in higher numbers of people who smoke, who are white, and people who have a family history of the often debilitating condition. And for those who had gone through AMD testing, they had generally had to sit in a darkened room for 20 minutes before testing had begun. But now, researchers from Australia’s Vision...
Research conducted at the Angiogenesis Laboratory at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, has for the first time, identified the mode of death of cone photoreceptor cells in an animal model of retinitis pigmentosa (RP). This groundbreaking study, led by Demetrios G. Vavvas, M.D., Ph.D., and including Joan W. Miller, M.D., Mass. Eye and Ear/Mass General Hospital Chief of Ophthalmology and Chair of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, has further identified the receptor interacting protein...
New York University biologists have identified a new mechanism for regulating color vision by studying a mutant fly named after Frank ('Ol Blue Eyes) Sinatra. Their findings, which appear in the journal Nature, focus on how the visual system functions in order to preserve the fidelity of color discrimination throughout the life of an organism. They also offer new insights into how genes controlling color detection are turned on and off. Many biologists study how different cells develop to...
After more than three decades of research, University of Pennsylvania veterinarians and vision-research scientists, with associates at Cornell University, have identified a gene responsible for a blindness-inducing disease that afflicts dogs. In the process, the Penn scientists may have discovered clues about how retinal cells, and perhaps even neurons, can be regenerated. The research was conducted by Gustavo D. Aguirre, William A. Beltran, Agnes I. Berta and Sem Genini of Penn's School...
Johns Hopkins researchers uncover the source of the visual system's 'false alarms'On rare occasion, the light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the eye misfire and signal to the brain as if they have captured photons, when in reality they haven't. For years this phenomenon remained a mystery. Reporting in the June 10 issue of Science, neuroscientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that a light-capturing pigment molecule in photoreceptors can be triggered by...
The human eye long ago solved a problem common to both digital and film cameras: how to get good contrast in an image while also capturing faint detail. Nearly 50 years ago, physiologists described the retina's tricks for improving contrast and sharpening edges, but new experiments by neurobiologists at University of California, Berkeley and the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha show how the eye achieves this without sacrificing shadow detail. These details will be published next...
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have peered deep into the eye of the chicken and found a masterpiece of biological design.Scientists mapped five types of light receptors in the chicken's eye. They discovered the receptors were laid out in interwoven mosaics that maximized the chicken's ability to see many colors in any given part of the retina, the light-sensing structure at the back of the eye."Based on this analysis, birds have clearly one-upped us...
Ever wonder how your eyes adjust during a blackout? When we go from light to near total darkness, cells in the retina must quickly adjust. Vision scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified an intricate process that allows the human eye to adapt to darkness very quickly. The same process also allows the eye to function in bright light.The discovery could contribute to better understanding of human diseases that affect the retina, including age-related...
