Beautiful new study by Michael Bok, Macali & Garm on the high-resolution eyes of the enigmatic alciopid annelids, from Ponza island.
"Our results show that the eyes of alciopids possess the anatomical, morphological, and physiological properties requisite for high resolution tasks and object vision" https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.055 #annelid#Evolution#eye@biology@mikebok
Super impressive Gasper! Would have loved to have the same for our Bryozoan back when I worked on their Phototaxis. I think Harald started working with Catmaid when I left the lab but as far as I know not much has come out yet.
From the title I thought that the UV opsin itself was also performing the pressure sensing function… Which would be fascinating to me, as I have worked with viscosity and pressure-sensitive fluorophores in the past (BODIPYs and DCDHF), and I would love to see living things making use of this molecular sensor design.
But I now see that it is a different molecular sensor that is also present in the UV sensing cell:
Our results indicate that the ciliary opsin required for detecting UV light is not essential for pressure sensation.
So, today is not the day we find pressure-sensitive fluorescent sensors in a living organism, but that is still a fascinating finding. I will have to read more about those “TRP channels”, the “ultimate integrators of sensory stimuli”. They seem like a very interesting class of bio molecules that I still know too little about 😁
Really nice work, thanks a lot for sharing it here!!
@Sal Thank you! Indeed, the opsin is not the sensor, but we can use a mutation in the opsin gene to disrupt the ciliary superstructure and then we see a phenotype in pressure sensing, and also in UV light sensing, as we previously described: https://elifesciences.org/articles/36440
Our SEM finally made it across the Channel from Exeter to #Heidelberg.
It took us several months of bureaucracy, including over 200 emails to sort out the paperwork.
Nobody involved had a clue about the customs documents.The UK and EU branches of the microscope company, the two universities, the shipping company...
If you scale this up to the entire UK economy, it is easy to see how massively damaging #brexit must have been.
Congrats! Our FIBSEM was manufactured in the UK, sent to Germany to fit the Gallium gun at 90 degrees, then sent back. It was not fast, and everything that could go wrong went wrong, including a broken SEM column, broken replacement parts, wrong parts, and delays, delays, delays.
Our new EU PhD Network #ZooCell is hiring! We have 12 PhD positions in Germany, France, UK, Italy and Sweden.
The broad topic is evolution of sensory cell types in animal diversity: multidisciplinary training in 3D cellular reconstruction (volume EM), multimodal data analysis and science outreach.
The Living Systems Institute (LSI) in Exeter is appointing now.
From Senior Lecturer to Professor level affiliated with the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences to drive world-leading research in interdisciplinary life science.
More information here: https://tinyurl.com/bdh7utx8