Models for transmitter activation process in retinal rod outer segments to flash stimuli

Abstract

It has been generally accepted that transmitter molecules, which participated in the visual transduction process in retinal rod outer segments, are activated by bleached rhodopsin molecules serially one by one (serial activation model). This serial activation model accounts for some experimental observations, but not the quick and amplified activation of transmitter molecules. In this study, two models are proposed and solutions from the differential equations of the models are compared quantitatively with experimental observations. The two models proposed in this study are the serial-parallel activation model and the parallel-parallel activation model. In the serial-parallel activation model, rhodopsin molecules are activated by bleached rhodopsin molecules. Transmitter molecules are activated both by bleached and activated rhodopsin molecules. In the parallel-parallel activation model, both rhodopsin and transmitter molecules are activated by bleached and activated rhodopsin molecules. The time taken to activate 90% of transmitter molecules after flash stimuli, which bleaches 10(-4)% of rhodopsin, is 5.94 s, 3.91 ms and 23.7 microseconds for the serial, serial-parallel and parallel-parallel activation models, respectively. As contrasted to the serial activation model in which transmitter activation proceeds too slow, the present serial-parallel and parallel-parallel activation models can reproduce transmitter activation quick enough to account for the experimental observations.