OPN3
Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens
Opsin-3 also known as encephalopsin or panopsin is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the OPN3 gene. Alternative splicing of this gene results in multiple transcript variants encoding different protein isoforms.
01Function
Opsins are members of the G protein-coupled receptor superfamily. In addition to the visual opsins, mammals possess several photoreceptive non-visual opsins that are expressed in tissues outside the eye. The opsin-3 gene is strongly expressed in brain and testis and weakly expressed in liver, placenta, heart, lung, skeletal muscle, kidney, and pancreas. The gene is expressed in the skin and may also be expressed in the retina. The protein has the canonical features of a photoreceptive opsin protein, however in human skin, OPN3 is not photoreceptive and acts as a negative regulator of melanogenesis.
02Applications
When OPN3 analogues are expressed in neurons, activation by light inhibits neurotransmitter release. This makes these analogues useful tools for optogenetic silencing, a method to study the impact of specific neurons on brain function.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “OPN3”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ideogram house mouse chromosome 1.svg by National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Public domain
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