Molecular evolution of visual pigments

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With the rapidly accumulating sequence data in the genomic databases, new bioinformatic approaches and efficient experimental methods are needed to decipher the information contained in this wealth of sequence data. Molecular evolutionary approaches offer the perspective of understanding the diversity of protein function from the historical forces that shaped its evolution. This research seeks to understand the mechanisms of visual pigment function using a variety of innovative comparative approaches such as the experimental resurrection of ancestral proteins, and investigations of present day animals with unusual visual adaptations. Ancestral visual pigment studies will be combined with studies of the visual pigments found in the all-cone retina of the garter snake. Molecular mechanisms underlying the unusual vision of garter snakes will be investigated by characterizing the visual pigments contained in their photoreceptors. Our innovative approach combining studies of both resurrected and present day visual pigments promises to yield insights into visual pigment function not easily attainable by more conventional methods. Ultimately, better understanding of visual pigment structure and function will have important implications not only for the treatment of eye diseases, but also for the pharmaceutical industry, and the development of drugs which target G protein coupled receptors, of which visual pigments are one of the best studied members.