ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — Scientists have known for more than 200 years that vision begins with a series of chemical reactions when light strikes the retina, but the specific chemical processes have largely been a mystery. A team of researchers from the United States and Switzerland have shed new light on this process by "capturing" this chemical communication for future study.

This research may lead to the development of new treatments for some forms of blindness and vision disorders.

At the center of the discovery is the signaling of rhodopsin to transducin. Rhodopsin is a pigment in the eye that helps detect light. Transducin is a protein (sometimes called "GPCR") which ultimately signals the brain that light is present. The researchers were able to "freeze frame" the chemical communication between rhodopsin and transducin to study how this takes place and what goes wrong at the molecular level in certain disorders.

MORE AND SOURCE @ : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090129155418.htm