S. Archer et J. Hirano, ABSORBENCY SPECTRA AND MOLECULAR-STRUCTURE OF THE BLUE-SENSITIVE ROD VISUAL PIGMENT IN THE CONGER EEL (CONGER CONGER), Proceedings - Royal Society. Biological Sciences, 263(1371), 1996, pp. 761-767
The conger eel (Conger conger) is a nocturnal fish that can be found l
iving in shallow coastal water and deep water down to 1000 m. The cong
er eel has a pure rod retina with a visual pigment maximally sensitive
to blue light around 487 nm. We have cloned and sequenced the opsin c
DNA which is presumed to code for this visual pigment and have found i
t to be highly homologous to the form of opsin that is expressed in ma
ture, deep-living European eels (Anguilla anguilla). The opsin sequenc
e information presented here provides additional evidence that specifi
c amino acid sites are involved in the spectral tuning of this class o
f blue-sensitive visual pigments.