Two realms of dark adaptation

The recovery of rod responsiveness after saturating flashes is greatly retarded above a certain critical level of rhodopsin bleaching (∼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.