Figure 1. Interactions between arrestin and rhodopsin's cytoplasmic tail

This figure is a representation of the computational simulations of the interactions between arrestin and the rhodopsin cytoplasmic tail. It is a Visual Molecular Dynamics representation [43] of the Monte-Carlo Simulated Annealing simulations previously described in Ling et al. [13]. The interaction between a 20 amino acid rhodopsin C-terminal peptide analog and the arrestin molecule was computationally simulated. The phosphorylatable sites on the peptide were replaced with Asp residues to mimic phospho-residues. This figure depicts the final conformation of both the peptide and arrestin once the simulations were complete. The residues on the rhodopsin peptide designated in red are residues Asp³³⁴ and Asp³⁴⁰ that were found to have a positive interaction with the residues on arrestin, designated in yellow. The yellow residues on arrestin are residues Lys¹⁵, Arg²⁹, His³⁰¹, and Lys³⁰⁰.