Butterfly gyroid nanostructures as a time-frozen glimpse of intracellular membrane development
Date
2017
Authors
Wilts, Bodo
Apeleo Zubiri, Benjamin
Klatt, Michael A
Butz, Benjamin
Fischer, Michael G
Kelly, Stephen T
Spiecker, Erdmann
Steiner, Ullrich
Schroeder-Turk, Gerd
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
Abstract
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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Science Advances
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Journal article
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Open Access
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Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
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