Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 313, Issue 5786, Pages 530-533Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1126612
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Funding
- NEI NIH HHS [EY-02048, EY-11850, EY-12155, T32EY-07031] Funding Source: Medline
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Although signals controlled by single molecules are expected to be inherently variable, rod photoreceptors generate reproducible responses to single absorbed photons. We show that this unexpected reproducibility - the consistency of amplitude and duration of rhodopsin activity varies in a graded and systematic manner with the number but not the identity of phosphorylation sites on rhodopsin's C terminus. These results indicate that each phosphorylation site provides an independent step in rhodopsin deactivation and that collectively these steps tightly control rhodopsin's active lifetime. Other G protein cascades may exploit a similar mechanism to encode accurately the timing and number of receptor activation.
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