Abstract
DARTNALL1 proposed that the normalised absorption spectrum of any vitamin A1-based visual pigment, when plotted on a frequency scale, could be fit to a standard shape, independent of its spectral absorbance maximum (λm). The existence of a standard shape implies that all pigments have the same band width. Dartnall devised an extremely useful nomogram so that given the λm of a pigment one could determine the entire shape of its main absorption band. A similar, slightly broader nomogram has been found for vitamin A2-based pigments2,3.
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GREENBERG, A., HONIG, B. & EBREY, T. Wavelength dependence of the bandwidths of visual pigment spectra. Nature 257, 823–824 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1038/257823a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/257823a0
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