Mechanism of melanophore dispersion-II. Stimulus-reaction-recovery and receptor problem

In a previous publication¹, similarity was shown to exist between the melanophore movement in the Hyla frog skin and various stimulus-reaction-recovery phenomena, such as muscle contraction, nerve firing etc. The main advantage of the melanophore reaction is that both the darkening and lightening process last about 30 min, while other stimulus reaction models take a fraction of a second. The lightening is, moreover, not necessarily coupled to the darkening. The various agents inducing darkening and lightening have nothing in common structurally. Experimental evidence points to the important role played by a flavo protein-regulated ATP-ase system which, according to our hypothesis, is the functioning unit of the "receptor".