Special Issue: Recent Advances in Retinal Protein Research
Editorial: Forewords to the special issue “Recent advances in retinal protein research”
2023 年 20 巻 Supplemental 号 論文ID: e201001
詳細
2023 年 20 巻 Supplemental 号 論文ID: e201001
To utilize light, organisms have produced a variety of photoreceptive proteins with cognate chromophore molecule. Rhodopsin has vitamin-A aldehyde retinal as a chromophore within the multiple transmembrane domain and is also called as retinal protein [1–3]. Of note, the retinal proteins are widely distributed in various organisms including animals, microorganisms and viruses, suggesting their biological importance [1–3]. In fact, retinal proteins play central roles in photoreception in organisms through light-energy conversion and light-signal transduction [1–3]. After 2005, the retinal proteins have been applied to the optogenetics, a technique that allows us to control the activity of specific neurons and animal behavior by light [4].
In 1876, Dr. Boll has recognized that visual reddish pigment in frog retina is photosensitive, and then Dr. Kühne has demonstrated that the pigment named visual purple (rhodopsin) is the protein expressed in photoreceptor cells. After that, Dr. Wald has discovered that rhodopsin possesses vitamin-A aldehyde retinal as a chromophore. In 1971, Drs. Oesterhelt and Stoeckenius have discovered a rhodopsin-like pigment from the purple cellular membrane of the archaeon Halobacterium salinarum (formerly halobium). After that, the detailed structures and structural changes both of animal rhodopsins and microbial ones have been extensively analyzed by various techniques as models for membrane-embedded proteins, for photoactive proteins and as a fundamental tool for optogenetics.
The International Conference on Retinal Proteins (ICRP) has been established in 1984 as the only international conference to comprehensively address retinal proteins. Since then, the conference has been held every two years at different venues around the world including USA, European countries and Japan. Following the success of ICRP2018 held in Canada, ICRP2020 was planned in Japan. However, the unfortunate situation with COVID-19 affected our planning. Following the approval of the Local Organizing Committee and the International Advisory Committee, we decided to postpone the conference, and organized ICRP on Oct. 30–Nov. 4, 2022.
The main objective of this conference was to share the latest research on the diverse aspects of retinal proteins, including crystallographic and spectroscopic studies of protein structure and dynamics, genetic, biochemical and physiological studies of protein function, mechanism of signal transduction and energy transduction, and optogenetics.
In this special issue, we invited submission mainly from the participants of ICRP2022. It is fortunate that we could gather these nice papers in the special issue, and we hope that they offer a chance to general readers of Biophysics and Physicobiology to gain interest in interdisciplinary studies of retinal proteins.
