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Photoregeneration and the Adaptation Process in Insect Photoreceptors

  • Chapter
Photoreceptor Optics

Abstract

Nearly half a century ago it was suggested that absolute sensitivity of photoreceptors depends on the rhodopsin content of rod outer segments in a simple photochemical way: a decrease in rhodopsin concentration causes a proportional decrease in the probability of quantal absorption and hence leads to a proportional loss in sensitivity. From measurements of rhodopsin concentration and sensitivity in the eyes of man (RUSHTON et al., 1955; RUSHTON, 1961) and rat (DOWLING, 1960, 1963) it became evident that this early hypothesis was not true: in both human and rat eyes, an approximately linear relationship between log sensitivity and rhodopsin concentration was found. The slope \( \left( {\frac{{\Delta \log s}}{{\Delta {c_R}}}} \right)\)of this relation varies from species to species. The highest value, \( \left( {\frac{{{R_{\Delta \log s}}}}{{\Delta {c_R}}}} \right) = 6\) was reported for the retina of the albino rat. In this retina, a decrease of 17% in rhodopsin concentration reduces the sensitivity to 1/10; a decrease of 34% reduces the sensitivity to 1/100 and so on (WEINSTEIN et al., 1967). Whereas the sensitivity is greatly decreased, the probability of quantal absorption is only slightly reduced.

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Authors
  1. Kurt Hamdorf
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  2. Joachim Schwemer
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics, Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, P.O. Box 4, 2600, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia

    Allan W. Snyder

  2. Fachbereich Biologie, Zoologie, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 3, 61 Darmstadt, W.Germany

    Randolf Menzel

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© 1975 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg

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Hamdorf, K., Schwemer, J. (1975). Photoregeneration and the Adaptation Process in Insect Photoreceptors. In: Snyder, A.W., Menzel, R. (eds) Photoreceptor Optics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80934-7_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80934-7_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-80936-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-80934-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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