{"id":97629,"date":"2019-10-20T08:23:46","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T15:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/scientists-discover-skin-keeps-time-independent-of-the-brain"},"modified":"2019-10-20T08:23:46","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T15:23:46","slug":"scientists-discover-skin-keeps-time-independent-of-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/scientists-discover-skin-keeps-time-independent-of-the-brain","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover skin keeps time independent of the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-skin-keeps-time-independent-of-the-brain.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, amphibians, and chameleon lizards are among the animals that can change the color of their skin in a blink of an eye. They have photoreceptors in their skin that operate independently of their brain. The photoreceptors are part of a family of proteins known as opsins.<\/p>\n<p>Mammals have opsins, too. They are the most abundant proteins in the retina. These light-sensing photopigments are responsible for color vision (cone opsins) and vision in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/dim+light\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">dim light<\/a> (rhodopsin). While previous studies have suggested that mammals might express <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/opsin\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">opsin<\/a> proteins outside the eye, there was little information on what functions they might influence.<\/p>\n<p>A study published Oct. 10 in <i>Current Biology<\/i> has now found that a type of opsin known as neuropsin is expressed in the hair follicles of mice and synchronize the skin\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/circadian+clock\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">circadian clock<\/a> to the light-dark cycle, independent of the eyes or brain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, amphibians, and chameleon lizards are among the animals that can change the color of their skin in a blink of an eye. They have photoreceptors in their skin that operate independently of their brain. The photoreceptors are part of a family of proteins known as opsins. Mammals have opsins, too. They are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}