Dr. Krzystof Palczewski, Bishop Professor of Ophthalmology, and a team of UW researchers and their international colleagues have mapped the first crystal structure of a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). The GPCR is rhodopsin, one of a family of proteins crucial to everything from vision to embryonic development.

In phototransduction, a process critical to carrying out the first steps of vision, rhodopsin absorbs proteins inside the cell membranes of retinal rod cells. Phototransduction is the action of converting the body’s sensing of light into a nerve signal to the brain. Understanding rhodopsin helps investigators understand all GPCRs by giving them computational models for deciphering how other GPCRs function. GPCRs are one of the largest families—comprising some 3 percent—of proteins encoded in the human genome.

GPCRs, for example, are involved in receptors in the tongue and nose that are responsible for the senses of taste and smell. They are involved in regulation of the heartbeat, and even in opiate receptors in the brain that cause drug addiction.