We performed a histopathologic and immunohistochemical study of eyes obtained at autopsy of an 84-year-old man from a family with X-linked cone degeneration in which affected members have a 6.5-kilobase deletion in the red cone pigment gene. At his most recent ocular examination, at age 71 years, this patient had had a visual acuity of 20/200 OU, fundus changes suggestive of macular degeneratio...

This paper describes the localization of newly identified visual pigment opsins in the tiered retina of the Japanese yellow swallowtail Papilio xuthus. We first cloned three cDNAs encoding visual pigment opsins, PxRh1, PxRh2 and PxRh3, and then carried out histological in situ hybridization to localize their mRNAs in the retina. By combining the present data with our previous electrophysiologic...

Human red and green visual pigment genes are X-linked duplicate genes. To study their evolutionary history, introns 2 and 4 (1,987 and 1,552 bp, respectively) of human red and green pigment genes were sequenced. Surprisingly, we found that intron 4 sequences of these two genes are identical and that the intron 2 sequences differ by only 0.3%. The low divergences are unexpected because the dupli...

PURPOSE One of the most prominent changes that occurs in the retinal pigment epithelium during senescence is the progressive accumulation of the autofluorescent pigment lipofuscin. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the role of nonenzymatic oxidation of photoreceptor outer segments in retinal pigment epithelium lipofuscin formation. METHODS Albino Fischer rats were given intravitreal inje...

PURPOSE To investigate the mechanism(s) by which intracellular cAMP levels are elevated to induce pigment granule aggregation in teleost retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). METHODS Pigment granule migration was studied in vitro using RPE sheets isolated from dark-adapted green sunfish, Lepomis cyanellus. After preculture to allow pigment granule dispersion, RPE sheets were incubated with variou...

Normal retinal tissue consists of the nine-layer sensory retina on the vitreous side and onelayer retinal pigment epithelium on the choroidal side. Serous retinal detachment is a detachment of the sensory retina from the retinal pigment epithelium. Central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) is a condition causing local serous neurosensory detachment in the macular region. CSC causes circular or ova...

Following gene duplication events, the expression patterns of the resulting gene copies can often diverge both spatially and temporally. Here we report on gene duplicates that are expressed in distinct but overlapping patterns, and which exhibit temporally divergent expression. Butterflies have sophisticated color vision and spectrally complex eyes, typically with three types of heterogeneous o...

Amino acid changes S180A (S-->A at site 180), H197Y, Y277F, T285A, and A308S are known to shift the maximum wavelength of absorption (lambda max) of red and green visual pigments toward blue, essentially in an additive fashion. To test the generality of this "five-sites" rule, we have determined the partial amino acid sequences of red and green pigments from five mammalian orders (Artiodactyla,...

aim: to report a patient with fundus flavimaculatus or macular dystrophy with flecks, who came to medical attention due to deteriorated vision in one eye and combined hamartoma of the retina and retinal pigment epithelium. case presentation: a 26 year old lady was referred with history of progressive decreased vision in both eyes since childhood with recently deteriorated vision in her right ey...

In the teleost eye, the melanin granules of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) move in response to changes in light conditions. In the dark, pigment granules aggregate toward the cell base, and in the light, they disperse into long apical projections. Isolated RPE cells from the green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus) were used to investigate the mechanism and regulation of pigment movement. Changi...