That matters for basic biology, but it also has a practical edge because red and near-infrared light are already staples in medical technologies.<\/p>\n The work focuses on opsins, the light-sensing proteins at the heart of vision. What the team discovered is not just \u201cdragonflies see red,\u201d but that \u201cdragonflies may be seeing red in a way we didn\u2019t expect from an insect.\u201d<\/p>\n Vision beyond deep red<\/p>\n Human color vision<\/a> depends on opsins tuned to different parts of the spectrum. In simple terms, we rely on three main types that are most sensitive to blue, green, and red wavelengths.<\/p>\n Dragonflies, though, have a reputation for unusually rich vision compared with many other insects. They hunt fast-moving prey midair, track rivals, and interact at speed, so their eyes aren\u2019t just decoration.<\/p>\n The OMU team, led by Mitsumasa Koyanagi and Akihisa Terakita, identified a dragonfly opsin that responds to light around 720 nanometers. That wavelength sits beyond what most people think of as the \u201cdeep red\u201d boundary of visible light.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the most red-sensitive visual pigments ever found,\u201d Terakita said. \u201cDragonflies can likely see deeper into red light than most insects.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus, the dragonfly\u2019s visual toolkit includes a pigment tuned to a zone that many insects<\/a> barely touch.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t mean dragonflies are seeing full infrared like a thermal camera. But it does mean they can push farther into the red end than expected, potentially giving them an extra information channel in the world they fly through.<\/p>\n Seeing mates in motion<\/p>\n The researchers didn\u2019t stop at \u201chere\u2019s a pigment.\u201d They also asked what it might be for, because a sensory ability usually sticks around only if it\u2019s useful.<\/p>\n One hypothesis was mate detection. If males and females reflect red and near-infrared light differently, then having a pigment tuned to that range could make it easier to tell a \u201cpotential mate\u201d from \u201cnot a mate\u201d while moving quickly.<\/p>\n To test that, the team looked at reflectance, meaning how much light a surface bounces back.<\/p>\n In dragonflies, reflectance can influence how individuals appear to one another in real time, especially during fast flight.<\/p>\n They found noticeable differences between males and females in red-to-near-infrared reflectance.<\/p>\n That supports the idea that sensitivity to these wavelengths<\/a> could help males quickly pick out females, even in visually messy environments like bright water edges or sunlit vegetation.<\/p>\n Same solution, different evolution<\/p>\n The most interesting part came when the team looked more closely at the protein. They concluded that the way the dragonfly opsin achieves its red sensitivity matches the strategy used by mammalian red opsins.<\/p>\n \u201cSurprisingly, the mechanism by which dragonfly red opsin detects red light is identical to that of red opsin in mammals, including humans,\u201d said study first author Ryu Sato, a graduate student at Osaka Metropolitan University.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an unexpected result, suggesting that the same evolutionary process occurred independently in distantly related lineages.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the parallel evolution punchline: different evolutionary paths, similar molecular trick.<\/p>\n From insects to innovation<\/p>\n Once you find an opsin that responds to longer wavelengths, it\u2019s hard not to think about tools, not just animals. Red and near-infrared light are already useful because they penetrate tissue better than shorter wavelengths like blue or UV.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why the team explored whether this dragonfly opsin could be pushed even further into the near-infrared range by tweaking its structure. <\/p>\n They pinpointed a single key position in the protein that strongly affects which wavelengths it prefers.<\/p>\n Researchers then engineered a modified version that responded to even longer wavelengths. They also showed that cells equipped with the altered opsin could be activated by near-infrared light, offering the kind of proof-of-concept optogenetics researchers look for.<\/p>\n Pushing light deeper into tissue<\/p>\n Optogenetics is the idea of controlling cells with light by giving them light-sensitive proteins. It\u2019s widely used in neuroscience and cell biology. <\/p>\n One limitation is that light doesn\u2019t travel equally well through living tissue. Because of that, longer wavelengths can be a major advantage.<\/p>\n \u201cWe succeeded in shifting the sensitivity of a modified near-infrared opsin from Gomphidae dragonflies even further toward longer wavelengths and confirmed that the modified near-infrared opsin can induce cellular responses to near-infrared light,\u201d Koyanagi said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese findings demonstrate this opsin as a promising optogenetic tool capable of detecting light even deep within living organisms.\u201d<\/p>\n The promise here is straightforward: if you can activate an engineered opsin<\/a> with near-infrared light, you may be able to trigger responses deeper in the body with less invasive setups.<\/p>\n That could matter for research now and, eventually, for medical applications that need precision without cutting into tissue.<\/p>\n When evolution agrees on design<\/p>\n This study lands in a sweet spot where biology and engineering overlap. On the biology side, it hints that dragonflies didn\u2019t just stumble into red sensitivity with an insect-only workaround, but instead converged on a mammal-like mechanism.<\/p>\n That matters because convergence is often how you spot truly effective designs in nature.<\/p>\n If evolution independently \u201cpicks\u201d the same molecular strategy in different lineages, it suggests there may be a limited number of optimal ways to solve that particular problem.<\/p>\n Dragonflies inspire new technology<\/p>\n On the technology side, the work offers a new candidate tool for optogenetics, especially in cases where deeper light penetration is the bottleneck.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a finished medical device, and it\u2019s not claiming to cure anything, but it\u2019s a clear step toward a toolkit better matched to how light actually behaves in living tissue.<\/p>\n It also reframes how we think about dragonflies. They\u2019re already known for speed and precision as aerial hunters, but this research suggests their sensory world<\/a> may include signals that many other insects simply can\u2019t detect.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the fun part of studies like this: they start with a basic question \u2013 how does this animal see \u2013 and end with ideas that could help shape future tools for humans.<\/p>\n In this case, the path runs straight through a tiny protein that learned to detect deep red light \u2013 twice, in two very different branches of life.<\/p>\n The work is published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes evolution arrives at the same \u201csolution\u201d twice, even in animals that are very distantly related. That\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,141],"class_list":{"0":"post-391942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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