How whale shark rhodopsin evolved to see, in the deep blue sea

A group of researchers discovered that the rhodopsin — a protein in the eye that detects light — of whale sharks has changed to efficiently detect blue light, which penetrates deep-sea water easily. The amino acid substitutions — one of which is counterintuitively associated with congenital stationary night blindness in humans — aid in detecting the low levels of light in the deep-sea. Although these changes make the whale shark rhodopsin less thermally stable the deep-sea temperature, allows their rhodopsin to keep working. This suggests that the unique adaptation evolved to function in the low-light low-temperature environment where whale sharks live.
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