How to Use photoreceptor in a Sentence

photoreceptor

noun
  • Might have something to do with the way the photoreceptors in the eye work.
    — Adam Rogers, WIRED, 16 May 2018
  • When light enters the eye, it is captured by photoreceptor cells.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 24 May 2021
  • This goes to the photoreceptors.
    — Lauren J. Young, Scientific American, 4 May 2026
  • These photoreceptors are located in the back of the eye on the retina.
    — Monica Cull, Discover Magazine, 22 Apr. 2025
  • These photoreceptors are located in the retina, a thin layer in the back of the eye.
    — Caren Chesler, Popular Mechanics, 6 Mar. 2019
  • Basically, photoreceptors in the eye take two main forms, rods and cones.
    — Elaine Glusac, New York Times, 10 Jan. 2025
  • Our retinas contain three types of cone cells, photoreceptors that detect the wavelengths of light.
    — Jacek Krywko, Scientific American, 18 Apr. 2025
  • Due to a lack of nutrients, the photoreceptor cells die, leading to blindness.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 24 Jan. 2023
  • Vision starts with photoreceptors, cells in the eye that take in light and convert it to electrical signals.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 1 May 2023
  • The two main photoreceptor cells in the retina, cones and rods, transfer the light into electric signals.
    — Lucy Notarantonio, MSNBC Newsweek, 1 May 2025
  • Combining the top two lenses gives us an extra photoreceptor cone.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 23 Mar. 2017
  • Located at the back of the retina, photoreceptors convert light into signals that are sent to the brain.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 25 Oct. 2024
  • The high number of photoreceptors means the lenses require less power and less light to transmit images.
    — Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics, 17 Jan. 2020
  • There are two main types of photoreceptor cells—rods and cones—which convert light into stimuli the body can respond to and understand.
    — Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics, 27 Aug. 2019
  • Vertebrae animals, like humans, require two types of photoreceptor cells to see, known as rods and cones.
    — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 10 May 2019
  • That’s likely because these creatures lack several key photoreceptor genes, the study found.
    — Douglas Main, National Geographic, 15 Apr. 2019
  • Eventually, though, even the eye's rod photoreceptors used to perceive dim light went away, and the mole was left completely blind.
    — Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR, 2 Jan. 2025
  • That makes sense, because the photoreceptors in our eyes, which are called cones and rods, only detect light between these frequencies.
    — Kevin Cortez, Popular Mechanics, 17 Feb. 2023
  • Then the mole lost functional genes for cone photoreceptors, which are involved in perceiving bright light and color vision.
    — Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR, 2 Jan. 2025
  • In dim lighting, your rod cells, which are highly light-sensitive photoreceptors, become more active.
    — Diana Hubbell, Popular Science, 29 Oct. 2025
  • Rods are the photoreceptors responsible for scotopic, or low-light, vision.
    — Melissa Cristina Márquez, Forbes.com, 14 May 2025
  • This feature is what allows nutrients from the bloodstream to access the retinal membrane and the eye’s photoreceptor cells.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 24 Jan. 2023
  • Though bees have an impressive ability to see ultraviolet light, their eyes lack photoreceptors for red light.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 1 Mar. 2026
  • Focusing all of it onto the retina can cause photoreceptors to absorb high amounts of energy, damaging or killing them.
    — Tribune News Service, Hartford Courant, 28 Feb. 2024
  • The nanoparticles bound to the photoreceptors of the mice's eyes and provided night vision for up to 10 weeks without any ill effects.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 23 Sep. 2019
  • The lack of nutrients in the eye ultimately causes light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the eye to die, leading to blindness.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 24 Jan. 2023
  • The photoreceptors appear to be responsive to light in preliminary tests.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 9 Nov. 2023
  • The tiny chip sits behind the retina, the part of the eye that contains the photoreceptor cells that respond to the light of the world by triggering electric pulses in other cells.
    — Eliza Strickland, IEEE Spectrum, 28 Apr. 2015
  • But other experts argued that people used their experience to infer what a scene was supposed to look like—no photoreceptors involved.
    — Nicole Wetsman, Popular Science, 24 Apr. 2020
  • The mutation prevents the photoreceptors from sensing light, which contributes to low vision or blindness.
    — Time, 6 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'photoreceptor.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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