Molecular Characterization of Visual Pigments in Aquatic Mammals

University Of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

The scientific exploration of vision and particularly color vision has its historical roots as far back as the eighteenth century, when scientists such as Dalton and Young attempted to explain color vision and color blindness. Color vision allows an animal to make distinctions based on chromatic information rather than luminosity. Color vision helps an animal identify important objects in their environment The study color vision in aquatic mammals provides an unique opportunity to examine the adaptation of the mammalian visual system to the unique properties of an aquatic visual envirom-nent. We have recently demonstrated that the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) lacks the common cone-based dichromatic form of color vision typical of most terrestrial mammals. This is an exciting finding, and it is the beginning of a comprehensive molecular study of the visual pigments of aquatic mammals for two different mammalian orders and one suborder (whales, seals and manatees) have independently adapted to life in an aquatic environment. This research project will determine if all aquatic mammals: Cetacea, Pinnipedia and Sirenia have a visual system similar to that of the dolphin and express only two spectrally distinct classes of visual pigments: one rhodopsin and one cone pigment and hence lack typical mammalian dichromatic color vision. This comparative study of color vision in aquatic mammals will examine the adaptive processes that occurred as these distinct orders and suborder of mammals with different terrestrial ancestors moved from a land to an aquatic environment. This research project will allow my laboratory to continue to successfully train both women and minority science students. Of the ten minority and women undergraduates who have worked in my laboratory, two are enrolled in MD/Ph.D. programs, five are currently in graduate school and two are in medical school.