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Phototransduction Biophysics

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Synonyms

Biophysical mechanisms that photoreceptors use to sample light information; Phototransduction cascade; Phototransduction mechanisms

Definition

Phototransduction biophysics comprises intracellular molecular reactions and ion fluxes through ion channels on the photoreceptor membrane that converts light into an electrical signal. Phototransduction biophysics serves the purpose of counting photons and integrating these counts to an estimate – a macroscopic voltage response – of light changes from a small area of visual space. To do this task well in vastly varying light conditions, photoreceptors rely upon stochastic adaptive sampling of light information.

Detailed Description

Basic Structure of Photoreceptor Cells

Photoreceptor cells of most animals are highly polarized, consisting of light-sensitive and light-insensitive parts (Fig. 1). The light-sensitive part is derived either from cilia or microvilli (Fain et al. 2010), forming a specialized light guide, such as the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Mikko Juusola & Zhuoyi Song

  2. Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Roger Hardie

Authors
  1. Mikko Juusola
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  2. Zhuoyi Song
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  3. Roger Hardie
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mikko Juusola .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Ranu Jung

Section Editor information

  1. National Research Council, Institute of Biophysics, Palermo, Italy

    Michele Migliore

  2. Computational Physiology Lab, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Christiane Linster

  3. Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Francesco Cavarretta

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Juusola, M., Song, Z., Hardie, R. (2022). Phototransduction Biophysics. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1006-0_333

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