In this video, we're going to talk about our first lipid vitamin, which is vitamin A. Now, it's important to note that vitamin A is also commonly called retinol. And so, retinol and vitamin A are referring to the same molecule. Now, vitamin A is an isoprenoid lipid vitamin that's critical for proper eyesight. And so, you can see we've got these eyeballs over here to help remind you that vitamin A is important for eyesight.
And that's because vitamin A is actually required to form a light receptor protein in our eyes called rhodopsin. And so, rhodopsin is this light receptor protein found in specific cells of our eyes called rod cells. And, also, vitamin A is derived from the precursor molecule called beta carotene, which as its name implies, is a terpenoid abundant in carrots. And so, if you take a look at our image down below, notice over here what we have is the beta carotene molecule and these carrots over here. And that's because, again, the carrots contain a lot of beta carotene.
And beta carotene is the precursor molecule for our vitamin A over here or our retinol molecule, which we have boxed in right here. And, you can clearly see that beta carotene and vitamin A are both isoprenoid lipids because you can see these isoprene units embedded in their structures, and so that’s important to note. Now as we mentioned up above in our lesson, vitamin A is required to form the light receptor protein called rhodopsin. And so here we have the light receptor protein rhodopsin, and this light receptor protein rhodopsin is found in specific cells of our eyes, allowing us to have good eyesight. And so, if you eat your carrots, you’ll end up getting good eyesight, and that's a common thing that is known about carrots, that carrots allow you to develop good eyesight.
And so, this here concludes our introduction to vitamin A and retinol. And in our next lesson video, we’ll be able to talk about our next lipid vitamin which is vitamin D. So, I’ll see you guys there.