Abstract
Due to the successful absorption of a photon, a rhodopsin molecule is light-activated and starts a sequence of causal steps which lead in the Limulus photoreceptor to the generation of a relatively large elementary excitatory response, the “bump.” A bump is a transient increase of the cation conductance of the visual cell membrane and follows photon absorption after a long, greatly variable delay (on the average, latency ca. 200 ms). The bump size also varies greatly (average amplitude Ā ca. 1 nA, or average current-time integral F̄ ca. 50 pAs), indicating the variation of the degree of amplification in the transduction process. A bump is based on the transient opening of a large number (up to 103–104) of ion-specific channels through the cell membrane.
The visual cell changes its sensitivity according to the ambient illumination. A major part of this adaptation is accomplished by a control process which mainly regulates the degree of amplification that determines the size of the bump (bump adaptation, according to the adapting bump model). There are at least two mechanisms responsible for light adaptation: a faster one, a feedback loop, which regulates the sensitivity of the photoreceptor cell by variation of the intracellular level of free calcium ions, and a slower one which is not — or is much less — calcium-dependent.
A plausible description of the mechanism of bump generation includes the enzymatic production of transmitter and transmitter diffusion to the light-controlled ion channels which are distributed over a large area of the photosensory membrane. A time-consuming process which activates an enzyme could determine the latency. Transmitter diffusion over the “bump-speck” could be responsible for the bump rise, and either the stochastic closure of ion channels or the time course of transmitter decay could determine the exponential bump decay.
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© 1986 Dr. S. Bernhard, Dahlem Konferenzen, Berlin
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Stieve, H. (1986). Bumps, the Elementary Excitatory Responses of Invertebrates. In: Stieve, H. (eds) The Molecular Mechanism of Photoreception. Dahlem Workshop Reports, vol 34. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70444-4_13
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