Butterfly gyroid nanostructures as a time-frozen glimpse of intracellular membrane development.

ABSTRACT: The formation of the biophotonic gyroid material in butterfly wing scales is an exceptional feat of evolutionary engineering of functional nanostructures. It is hypothesized that this nanostructure forms by chitin polymerization inside a convoluted membrane of corresponding shape in the endoplasmic reticulum. However, this dynamic formation process, including whether membrane folding and chitin expression are simultaneous or sequential processes, cannot yet be elucidated by in vivo imaging. We report an unusual hierarchical ultrastructure in the butterfly Thecla opisena that, as a solid material, allows high-resolution three-dimensional microscopy. Rather than the conventional polycrystalline space-filling arrangement, a gyroid occurs in isolated facetted crystallites with a pronoun

SUBMITTER: Wilts BD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5406134 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature