Focus on vision: 3 decades of remarkable contributions to biology and medicine

Abstract

The FASEB Journal is a pillar among biomedical publications, contributing greatly by disseminating the results of vision research during its lifetime. Progress over this period has been remarkable. George Wald provided the first chemical understanding of the fundamental processes governing vision: the photoisomerization of 11-cis-retinal to all-trans-retinal and the enzymatic regeneration of this chromophore. Contributions of this extraordinary scientist set the stage for discoveries ranging from gross recording of various electrical responses to light to elucidation of signal transduction at a structural level, and from characterization of retinal diseases to successful treatments.