Visual transduction is the process by which light, captured
by photopigment inside retinal cells, generates an electrical
response on the plasma membrane of the cell. It involves
interaction and diffusion of substances (so called second
messengers) in the cell. A spectacular site about the physiology
of the eye is WebVsion.
Here is a spectacular micrograph of a fruitfly retina.
We are developing computational models of the protein cascade
on the discs, interactions with and diffusive transport
of the two primary second messengers, cGMP and Ca2+,
in the cytosol, and interactions at the outer membrane generating
an electrical signal, in response to photons hitting any of
the ~1000 "discs" inside a typical vertebrate rod cell.
The numerical models, derived via finite volume discretization,
are parallelized via domain decomposition for
distributed computation on clusters or networked workstations.
