EYE – Second Timers – V6

ELECTRICAL VITREOUS:  Behind the lens is a second pool of liquid called the vitreous humor.  This pool is much smaller than the aqueous humor pool, however, it is the source of the most strength for the eye in keeping its plump shape.

ELECTRICAL VITREOUS: The vitreous humor is thinner than the aqueous humor and has strange bio-cables running running through it.

ELECTRICAL VITREOUS: Something weird about the collagen ropes in the vitreous humor is that they are electrically charged.  

ELECTRICAL VITREOUS: We need electrically charged protein ropes in our eyeballs because the added electrical charge is necessary to get the rod and cone messages to the brain.

ELECTRICAL VITREOUS: If your collagen ropes in your vitreous humor in your eyeball ever stuck together any time in your lifetime, you’d begin to go blind.  This is because light can’t pass through clumps of collagen.

ELECTRICAL VITREOUS: Collagen is so thin that if it is kept apart and not allowed to clump, light can pass through it.  And this is what the electrical charges of the collagen do.  The collagen ropes repel each other like the same poles of a magnet do.  This keeps them the right distance apart and lets light pass through! Electric eyes.  Weird?  You bet.  But without them, we’d all be blind as a bat!

OPSIN PROTEINS: At the far side of the vitreous humor is the retina, what many scientists call the most complex piece of matter in the universe.  And it’s all packed into an area the size of a large bandaid!

OPSIN PROTEINS: Our eyes detect the different energies of individual light beams through AMAZING proteins called opsins.  We have 5 types in our eyes.  Rhodopsin is 1000 times more sensitive than other opsins to light.  It’s found in great numbers in our 100 million rod cells . Rhodopsin proteins help us see in dim light like you find on a moonlit night.

OPSIN PROTEINS:   We have different opsins for detecting the energies of red, green and blue light (RGB).  These proteins are in found the lowest layer of the retina in the cone cells.  Weirdly enough, we also have another opsin, melanopsin, which is in the ganglion cells on the tip-top of the retina.  Melanopsins also detect light and ganglion cells are wired to the brain where the brain receives the information they send.   The brain then uses the information the ganglion cells send to adjust the biological clocks in all the cells of our bodies! 

OPSIN PROTEINS: Bugs–like the giraffe weevil and other insects–have yet another type of opsin in their compound  eyes’ rhabdomeres.  They are called  rhabdomeric opsins.