Press release at @eLife of our paper exploring the mechanism of pressure sensing by UV light sensors in #Platynereis larvae
https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/5f58b93c/plankton-use-uv-light-sensors-to-detect-pressure-change-and-avoid-getting-swept-away
Luis Alberto Bezares Calderón et al. paper here:
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/94306
Sal@mander.xyz 1 year ago
From the title I thought that the UV opsin itself was also performing the pressure sensing function… Which would be fascinating to me, as I have worked with viscosity and pressure-sensitive fluorophores in the past (BODIPYs and DCDHF), and I would love to see living things making use of this molecular sensor design.
But I now see that it is a different molecular sensor that is also present in the UV sensing cell:
So, today is not the day we find pressure-sensitive fluorescent sensors in a living organism, but that is still a fascinating finding. I will have to read more about those “TRP channels”, the “ultimate integrators of sensory stimuli”. They seem like a very interesting class of bio molecules that I still know too little about 😁
Really nice work, thanks a lot for sharing it here!!
jekely@biologists.social 1 year ago
@Sal Thank you! Indeed, the opsin is not the sensor, but we can use a mutation in the opsin gene to disrupt the ciliary superstructure and then we see a phenotype in pressure sensing, and also in UV light sensing, as we previously described: https://elifesciences.org/articles/36440