Figure 6.
The physiologically active (meta II) state of S-pigment decays significantly faster than that of rhodopsin. A, Fitting the slow recovery phase of normalized dim-flash response from rho+/− arr1−/− rod with a single exponential decay function gave time constant of rhodopsin meta II of 50 s. B, Similar fit of the dim-flash response from S-opsinrho−/−arr1−/− rod gave an S-pigment meta II time constant of 1.2 s. C, In contrast to the case of rhodopsin, S-pigment meta II decay is sufficiently fast to allow collection of a complete family of flash responses, from threshold to saturation.