Abstract
The compound eye of worker honeybees with an inborn disturbance of intermediate metabolism of tryptophan — the snow (s) and laranja (la) mutations — has increased sensitivity to light, at least 100 times higher than normal in snow and at least 10 times higher in laranja. The maxima of the spectral sensitivity curves for the whole eye in snow are shifted into the 530 nm region and in laranja to 550 nm (comparedwith 545 nm for the wild type). The electroretinograms of s andla homozygotes are unusual in form on account of the presence of a fast additional component of the receptor potential that is absent in wild-type individuals. This may be the result of immaturity of the pigment granules in the mutants, due to the inherited absence of ommochromes. Pigment granules probably play an important role not only in the formation of the light-protective screen of the ommatidium, but also in biochemical processes considered to be responsible for the electrical passivity of the photoreceptor membrane. The possibility likewise cannot be ruled out that inherited changes in the photoreceptor membranes are connected with an imbalance between derivatives of tryptophan metabolism which participate in the generation of the cell receptor potential.
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I. M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leningrad. I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leningrad. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 69–75, January–February, 1982.
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Gribakin, F.G., Chesnokova, E.G. Changes in functional characteristics of the compound eye of bees caused by mutations disturbing tryptophan metabolism. Neurophysiology 14, 57–62 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01058820
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01058820