Discovery
In 1991 Russell G. Foster and colleagues, including Ignacio Provencio, discovered a non-rod, non-cone photoreceptor in the eyes of mice. It was shown to mediate circadian rhythms, i.e. the body's 24-hour biological clock. Foster was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2008. These novel cells express the photopigment melanopsin, which was first identified by Provencio and colleagues.
Read more about this topic: Photosensitive Ganglion Cell
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)