Answer to Question #116619 in Organic Chemistry for Jaweria Rana

Question

What are the applications of retinal. Give detailed answer.

Answer 1

Retinal is a conjugated chromophore. In the human eye, retinal begins in an 11-cis-retinal configuration, which, upon capturing a photon of the correct wavelength, straightens out into an all-trans-retinal configuration. This configuration change pushes against an opsin protein in the retina, which triggers a chemical signaling cascade which can result in perception of light or images by the human brain. The absorbance spectrum of the chromophore depends on its interactions with the opsin protein to which it is bound, so that different retinal-opsin complexes will absorb photons of different wavelengths.