Increasing the Stability of Recombinant Human Green Cone Pigment.

Three types of cone cells exist in the human retina, each containing a different pigment responsible for the initial step of photo-transduction. These pigments are distinguished by their specific absorbance maxima, 425 nm (blue), 530 nm (green) and 560 nm (red). Each pigment contains a common chromophore, 11-cis-retinal covalently bound to an opsin protein via a Schiff base. The 11-cis-retinal protonated Schiff base has an absorbance maxima at 440 nm in methanol. Unfortunately, the chemistry allowing the same chromophore interacting with different opsin proteins to tune the absorbance of the resulting pigments to distinct λmax values is poorly understood. Rhodopsin is the only pigment with a native structure determined at high resolution. Homology models for cone pigments have been generated, but experimentally determined structures are needed for a precise understanding of spectral tuning. The principal obstacle to solving the structures of cone pigments has been their innate instability in recombinant c...