Do They Taste Light?

. Tuesday, August 5, 2008
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My previous post was about the fact that C.elegans were sensitive to UV light. What made this more interesting was the protein that was discovered as responsible for this special character.

Conventional studies in these nematodes by Stacey L. Edwards, Kenneth G. Miller, and colleagues allowed them to identify a protein as being behind this interesting property. They called it, lite-1. Curiously, this protein was very similar to those that were known to be involved in tasting. Further investigations established that lite-1 did act as receptor for UV light.

This protein may soon find its way to the tool box of the modern molecular biologists. Perhaps, this protein also shows that there may be other proteins in higher organisms that are waiting to reveal their secrets!

Things are not what they seem to be... especially in the world of biology!

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