Science Literature
Post details: Fine tuning of the squid's lens
01/26/07
Fine tuning of the squid's lens
"Seeing clearly underwater requires a special spherical lens with a high refractive index in the center but a lower index toward the edge. This gradation is achieved with progressively lower concentrations, from the lens's center outward, of proteins called crystallins." In recent research into the complexity of the squid eye, the variety of crystalline variants has been established, evoking the comment: "It's amazing how finely tuned the squid lens is to do its job." The researcher "is deeply impressed by cephalopod vision." "Indeed, she noted, the shipboard tests showed that the vampire squid's lens, which appeared early in the evolutionary history of cephalopods, "has a visual acuity better than in a state-of-the-art Zeiss dissecting microscope."
The image caption says that "Vampire squid lenses are designed for seeing details, even in virtual darkness." The real issue is whether that design is intelligent or blind.
Loopy Lens Proteins Provide Squid with Excellent Eyesight
Elizabeth Pennisi
Science 315, 26 January 2007: 456.
When Alison Sweeney wanted to learn about eye evolution, she went to sea. While the ship rolled beneath her, she dissected the eyes of squid freshly retrieved from 1000 meters below and tested how well each lens resolved the details of a panel of ever-narrower black and white stripes. Back at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, as a graduate student in the lab of Sonke Johnsen, she combined those results with biochemical and modeling data on the optical and chemical properties of lens proteins to reconstruct the history of vision in cephalopods--squid, octopi, and their relatives. From just one ancestral lens protein--vertebrates started with several--these marine invertebrates have evolved lens-based eyesight more than once, Sweeney reported at the meeting.
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