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. 2022 Mar 2;39(3):msac033.
doi: 10.1093/molbev/msac033.

Rethinking Opsins

Roberto Feuda  1 , Anant K Menon  2 , Martin C Göpfert  3
Affiliations

Rethinking Opsins

Roberto Feuda et al. Mol Biol Evol. .

Abstract

Opsins, the protein moieties of animal visual photo-pigments, have emerged as moonlighting proteins with diverse, light-dependent and -independent physiological functions. This raises the need to revise some basic assumptions concerning opsin expression, structure, classification, and evolution.

Keywords: G protein-coupled receptors; moonlighting proteins; photosensitivity; sensory cell evolution; sensory transduction; vision.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Synopsis of the functional diversity of opsins. (A) Schematic representation of functional diversity of opsins. Opsin is depicted generically as a polytopic membrane protein with seven transmembrane spans, in the context of a membrane bilayer. (B) Phylogenetic distribution of main metazoan opsin paralogs (according to Feuda et al. [2012]) and their respective functions. The species tree reflects that reported by Feuda et al. (2017), and the dashed lines indicate the uncertainty in the phylogenetic position of ctenophores (Feuda et al. 2017, Li et al. 2021). Symbols as in panel (A). Echinoderm R-opsins are expressed in photoreceptors (Ullrich-Lüter et al. 2011), yet physiological evidence implicating them in light detection has not been reported, so the respective symbol is left gray.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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