This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: With about 30 visual pigments, compared to just three in humans, mantis shrimp possess a visual system that remains a mystery. Researchers from ULiège and Humboldt University in Berlin have, for the first time, analyzed these pigments one by one and discovered that some detect red light that very few animals can perceive.
This finding, published in Science Advances, has potential applications in optogenetics. Vision is one of the most sophisticated sensory systems; it relies on proteins (opsins) that capture light and convert the signal into an electrical message that the brain can interpret. When combined with retinal, a small, universal molecule derived from vitamin A, opsins form the visual pigments (rhodopsins) that absorb light in the photoreceptors of the retina.
In humans, three cone pigments are sufficient for color perception. In many invertebrates, such as insects and crustaceans, the eye has multiple facets, and different regions may specialize in ultraviolet, blue or green light. Mantis shrimp take this a step further.
Their eye is divided into two hemispheres separated by a central band, known as the median band, dedicated to color vision, and this band expresses an exceptional number of opsins. But why does this crustacean possess such powerful vision? This question has puzzled ecologists and biologists for decades.
It remains difficult to resolve because all these proteins coexist in the eye, and invertebrate opsins are notoriously difficult to produce and study in the lab. An international team of scientists has combined an in vitro expression platform developed by Marjorie Liénard, a researcher at GIGA—ULiège, with the electrophysiological expertise of Peter Hegemann's laboratory at Humboldt University in Berlin, with the support of biologists, biochemists and theorists from other universities in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. A scientific team led by Camille Brouillon, Alina Pushkarev and Liénard has measured the light sensitivity and signal-transmission mechanisms of the 17 visual opsins found in the mantis shrimp's median band.
It turned out that 12 of them were "standard" green opsins, similar to our own green pigment. Three are infrared opsins, including two red-blue bistable opsins that straddle the boundary between the visible and infrared spectrum. The remaining two are blue-orange bistable opsins.
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