Colour Vision: Dalton's eyes and monkey genes

Colour Vision: Dalton's eyes and monkey genes

Recent molecular genetic studies show how changes in the protein component of a visual pigment alters its absorbance; they also explain the abnormal colour vision of one of the great pioneers of visual science.

Sensory Polymorphism and Behavior: When Machine Vision Meets Monkey Eyes

Polymorphism in the peripheral sensory system (e.g., congenital individual differences in photopigment configuration) is important in diverse research fields, ranging from evolutionary biology to engineering, because of its potential relationship to the cognitive and behavioral variability among individuals. However, there is a gap between the current understanding of sensory polymorphism and t...

Colour-Vision and Colour-Blindness

Colour vision

The immense range of colours that we see belies the relative simplicity of the system underlying colour vision. We see colours because each of the three distinct types of cone photoreceptor in our retinae is sensitive to a different range of wavelengths of light. The L, M and S cones, colloquially called red (R), green (G), and blue (B), are selective for long, middle and short wavelengths, res...

Ancient colour vision: multiple opsin genes in the ancestral vertebrates

Molecular investigation of the origin of colour vision has discovered five visual pigment (opsin) genes, all of which are expressed in an agnathan (jawless) fish, the lamprey Geotria australis. Lampreys are extant representatives of an ancient group of vertebrates whose origins are thought to date back to at least the early Cambrian, approximately 540 million years ago [1]. Phylogenetic analysi...