Biomedical subjects

M L Firsov

Publications and source records attributed to M L Firsov.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Two realms of dark adaptation.

The recovery of rod responsiveness after saturating flashes is greatly retarded above a certain critical level of rhodopsin bleaching (approximately 0.1%). A mathematical description of the process of turn-off of the phototransduction cascade allows attributing different phases of the recovery to specific products of rhodopsin photolysis. The fast phase is determined by quenching of metarhodopsin II and activated transducin. The slow phase is controlled by decay of partially inactivated (phosphorylated and arrestin-bound) metarhodopsins, and by regeneration of rhodopsin. The transition between the two regimes of adaptation is rather abrupt, occurring within a few-fold range of stimulus intensity. This marks the border between reversal of light adaptation and dark adaptation, as it is commonly defined.

Adaptation, Ocular↗

PubMed1994

Response univariance in bull-frog rods with two visual pigments.

Rods in the bull-frog retina contain varying proportions of rhodopsin (lambda max = 502 nm) and porphyropsin (lambda max = 527 nm) in a dorso-ventral gradient from the porphyropsin-rich dorsal rim to the virtually pure rhodopsin fields of the central and ventral retina. We investigated if quantal excitations in the same rod are different depending on whether they are initiated by isomerization of a rhodopsin or a porphyropsin molecule. Current photoresponses were recorded from dark-adapted rods by sucking the outer segment into a recording pipette. The relation between pigment composition and spectral sensitivity was established by comparison with microspectrophotometrically measured absorbance spectra of rods from the same neighbourhood. Rods with suitable porphyropsin: rhodopsin mixtures (ideally between 1:4 and 1:2) were stimulated with flashes of red (608 nm) and blue (465 nm) light, whereby the red light will isomerize porphyropsin much more often than rhodopsin, and the reverse will be true of the blue light. The amplitude and shape of the single-photon response were found to be identical for the "red" and "blue" flash series to within measurement error (ca 10%). This indicates that the quantal responses initiated by the two pigments are identical.

Animals↗

PubMed1990

The frequency of isomerization-like 'dark' events in rhodopsin and porphyropsin rods of the bull-frog retina.

1. The dark current and responses to dim flashes were recorded with the suction pipette technique from single rods in pieces of bull-frog retina taken from either the dorsal porphyropsin or the ventral rhodopsin field. 2. The composition of visual pigment in the rods was determined by microspectrophotometry. Rods from the dorsal pieces contained 70-88% porphyropsin523 mixed with rhodopsin502. The ventral rods contained almost pure rhodopsin, any possible admixture of porphyropsin being below the level of detectability (less than 5%). 3. In most cells, the responses to dim flashes were well fitted by a four-stage linear filter model, with no systematic differences in the response kinetics of porphyropsin and rhodopsin rods. The amplitude of saturated responses varied between 8 and 55 pA and that of responses to single isomerizations between 0.4 and 3.5 pA. 4. In porphyropsin rods, discrete events similar to the response to one photoisomerization were clearly seen in complete darkness. The dark current amplitude histogram was fitted by a convolution of the probability densities for the Gaussian continuous noise component and the averaged dim-flash response waveform. This allows estimation of the frequency and amplitude of discrete events and the standard deviation of the continuous component. The mean frequency of discrete dark events thus obtained from six porphyropsin cells was 0.057 rod-1 s-1 at 18 degrees C. 5. In rhodopsin rods, the dark current amplitude histogram appeared completely symmetrical, indicating that the frequency of discrete events must be lower than 0.005 rod-1 s-1 (except in one rod where it was 0.006 events rod-1 s-1). Per molecule of rhodopsin, the events are then at least 5 times rarer than reported for toad rhodopsin rods at the same temperature. 6. The low rate of isomerization-like 'dark' events in bull-frog rhodopsin rods shows, firstly, that results cannot be generalized across species even for rhodopsins which appear spectrally identical. Secondly, it suggests that these events need not (in an evolutionary sense) constitute an irreducible noise factor which must set the ultimate limit to the sensitivity of dark-adapted vision. 7. The difference between porphyropsin and rhodopsin rods shows that, given (presumably) the same opsin, the pigment utilizing retinal2 and absorbing maximally at longer wavelengths produces more noise. The signal/noise ratio attained in the photoreceptor may be an important factor in the natural selection of visual pigments.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Photoreceptor coupling in turtle retina.

Photoreceptors in the isolated turtle retina of two species of turtle, Chelydra serpentina and Pseudemus scripta elegans, were penetrated with double-barrel electrodes. Physiological responses were recorded through one barrel and Neurobiotin tracer was injected from the other. Intracellular injection of Neurobiotin revealed patterns of tracer-coupled photoreceptors. Both the patterns of tracer coupling and the electrophysiology suggest a high degree of specificity of connections. Rods seem to be coupled only to rods and green and red cones seem to be coupled to cones of the same spectral type. Receptive-field profiles, measured with a thin, sharply focused slit of light, often had well-defined peaks and troughs in sensitivity. We have taken advantage of this observation and used the position of a peak in sensitivity to locate the position on the retina of a coupled cell. In one rod, it was possible to correlate physiological and morphological data and to show that the peaks in the physiological receptive field occurred at positions on the retina where there were dye-coupled cells. This provides direct evidence that gap junctions produce the physiological coupling between rods.

Animals↗