ArticleCurrent biology : CB2014
A rhodopsin-guanylyl cyclase gene fusion functions in visual perception in a fungus.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 84 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
84 citing papers in PubMed, 168 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Origins of GPCRs.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Mining Genetically Encoded Biosensors from Filamentous Fungi.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- The role of fungal G protein-coupled receptors in interspecies cell-cell communication.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- The photophobic response in the apusomonad Podomonas kaiyoae is mediated by coordination of cilia and actin filaments.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Optogenetic silencing by combining a rhodopsin cyclase with an engineered cGMP-gated potassium channel.Science advances · 2025Article
- Apusomonad rhodopsins: A new family of ultraviolet to blue light-absorbing rhodopsin channels.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Transcriptomic and metabolomic insights into light-mediated unicellular-to-multicellular transition inOpen biology · 2025Article
- How fungi see the world: fungal photoreceptors and their role in the regulation of fungal biology.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2025Review
- Two Decades of Optogenetic Tools: A Retrospective and a Look Ahead.Advanced genetics (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2025Review
- Super-resolution imaging of native fluorescent photoreceptors in chytrid fungal eyes.The EMBO journal · 2025Article
- Light Affects Host-Symbiont Dynamics in the Non-Photosynthetic Social Amoeba Symbiosis.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- mSphere of Influence: Fungal behavior as a framework for the evolution of emergent traits.mSphere · 2025Article
- Sensing a rainbow of colors: algal photoreceptors.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Review
- Optogenetics and Targeted Gene Therapy for Retinal Diseases: Unravelling the Fundamentals, Applications, and Future Perspectives.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- What is it like to be a choanoflagellate? Sensation, processing and behavior in the closest unicellular relatives of animals.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Diversity of rhodopsin cyclases in zoospore-forming fungi.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- Light Stress in Yeasts: Signaling and Responses in Creatures of the Night.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Algal rhodopsins encoding diverse signal sequence holds potential for expansion of organelle optogenetics.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2023Article
- Convergent evolution of animal and microbial rhodopsins.RSC advances · 2023Review
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Sensing light is the fundamental property of visual systems, with vision in animals being based almost exclusively on opsin photopigments [1]. Rhodopsin also acts as a photoreceptor linked to phototaxis in green algae [2, 3] and has been implicated by chemical means as a light sensor in the flagellated swimming zoospores of the fungus Allomyces reticulatus [4]; however, the signaling mechanism in these fungi remains unknown. Here we use a combination of genome sequencing and molecular inhibition experiments with light-sensing phenotype studies to examine the signaling pathway involved in visual perception in the closely related fungus Blastocladiella emersonii. Our data show that in these fungi, light perception is accomplished by the function of a novel gene fusion (BeGC1) of a type I (microbial) rhodopsin domain and guanylyl cyclase catalytic domain. Photobleaching of rhodopsin function prevents accumulation of cGMP levels and phototaxis of fungal zoospores exposed to green light, whereas inhibition of guanylyl cyclase activity negatively affects fungal phototaxis. Immunofluorescence microscopy localizes the BeGC1 protein to the external surface of the zoospore eyespot positioned close to the base of the swimming flagellum [4, 5], demonstrating this is a photoreceptive organelle composed of lipid droplets. Taken together, these data indicate that Blastocladiomycota fungi have a cGMP signaling pathway involved in phototaxis similar to the vertebrate vision-signaling cascade but composed of protein domain components arranged as a novel gene fusion architecture and of distant evolutionary ancestry to type II rhodopsins of animals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.