ArticleThe Journal of experimental biology2017
Optical influence of oil droplets on cone photoreceptor sensitivity.
Article in The Journal of experimental biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparative Retinal Morphology of Two Sympatric Lizard Species from Distinct Microhabitats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Colour Preference of Post Hatchling Hawksbill (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Insights into the evolution of photoreceptor oil droplets in frogs and toads.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Using high-resolution microscopy data to generate realistic structures for electromagnetic FDTD simulations from complex biological models.Nature protocols · 2024Article
- The relationship between spectral signals and retinal sensitivity in dendrobatid frogs.PloS one · 2024Article
- From water to land: Evolution of photoreceptor circuits for vision in air.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Astaxanthin: Past, Present, and Future.Marine drugs · 2023Review
- New insights into the retinal microstructure-diurnal activity relationship in the African five-lined skink (Trachylepis quinquetaeniata) (Lichtenstein, 1823).Zoological letters · 2023Article
- Mitochondria in cone photoreceptors act as microlenses to enhance photon delivery and confer directional sensitivity to light.Science advances · 2022Article
- A dune with a view: the eyes of a neotropical fossorial lizard.Frontiers in zoology · 2019Article
- Carotenoid composition and conformation in retinal oil droplets of the domestic chicken.PloS one · 2019Article
- Long-wavelength (red) light produces hyperopia in juvenile and adolescent tree shrews.Vision research · 2017Article
- Evolution, Development and Function of Vertebrate Cone Oil Droplets.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Oil droplets are spherical organelles found in the cone photoreceptors of vertebrates. They are generally assumed to focus incident light into the outer segment, and thereby improve light catch because of the droplets' spherical lens-like shape. However, using full-wave optical simulations of physiologically realistic cone photoreceptors from birds, frogs and turtles, we find that pigmented oil droplets actually drastically reduce the transmission of light into the outer segment integrated across the full visible wavelength range of each species. Only transparent oil droplets improve light catch into the outer segments, and any enhancement is critically dependent on the refractive index, diameter of the oil droplet, and diameter and length of the outer segment. Furthermore, oil droplets are not the only optical elements found in cone inner segments. The ellipsoid, a dense aggregation of mitochondria situated immediately prior to the oil droplet, mitigates the loss of light at the oil droplet surface. We describe a framework for integrating these optical phenomena into simple models of receptor sensitivity, and the relevance of these observations to evolutionary appearance and loss of oil droplets is discussed.
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