Journal
SCIENCE ADVANCES
Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1603119
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Funding
- Murdoch University's School of Engineering and Information Technology
- German Research Foundation (DFG)
- SPP 1570 [DFG SP 648/4-3]
- DFG-Forschergruppe FOR 1548 `Geometry and Physics of Spatial Random Systems' [HU1874/3-2, LA965/6-2]
- National Centre of Competence in Research Bio-Inspired Materials
- Adolphe Merkle Foundation
- Ambizione program of the Swiss National Science Foundation [PZ00P2_168223]
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [PZ00P2_168223] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
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The formation of the biophotonic gyroid material in butterflywing 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 spacefilling arrangement, a gyroid occurs in isolated facetted crystallites with a pronounced size gradient. When interpreted as a sequence of time-frozen snapshots of the morphogenesis, this arrangement provides insight into the formation mechanisms of the nanoporous gyroid material as well as of the intracellular organelle membrane that acts as the template.
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