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Photochemistry

A coherent picture of vision

Nature Chemistry volume 7, pages 945–947 (2015)Cite this article

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Vision is initiated by photoisomerization of 11-cis retinal in the visual pigment rhodopsin — a fast and efficient process. Spectroscopic studies now demonstrate that the transition from the reactant photoexcited-state to the ground-state photoproduct, which mediates this important reaction, occurs on a sub-50-fs timescale and is vibrationally coherent.

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Figure 1: The primary photochemical step in vision.

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  1. Richard A. Mathies is in the Department of Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA,

    Richard A. Mathies

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  1. Richard A. Mathies
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Correspondence to Richard A. Mathies.

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Mathies, R. A coherent picture of vision. Nature Chem 7, 945–947 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2406

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