Jung-Woong Kim, Hyun-Jin Yang, Adam Phillip Oel, Matthew John Brooks, Li Jia, David Charles Plachetzki, Wei Li, William Ted Allison & Anand Swaroop (2016)
Recruitment of Rod Photoreceptors from Short-Wavelength-Sensitive Cones during the Evolution of Nocturnal Vision in Mammals.
Developmental Cell 37(6): p520–532
DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2016.05.023
The evolution of rod-dominant retinas was a critical adaptation, allowing mammalian ancestors to survive a nocturnal bottleneck. Kim et al. provide evidence suggesting that this evolutionary transition was driven by molecular innovations in the Maf-family protein NRL, which led to the recruitment of rods from S cones in early mammals.
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