Structural Color Biogenesis

Color is a feature present throughout nature, essential for animals’ proper integration in the wild.

Our aim is to uncover color production at the cellular level, in particular regarding how structural colors are created by zebrafish reflectors. These structures are guanine photonic crystals, which reflect light through a lattice organization. Importantly, these crystals are enclosed intracellularly within membranous organelles.

Through a novel approach to study reflection in vivo with confocal microscopy, we are determining the type of crystal vesicles in zebrafish, characterizing the vesicular guanine transport as well as quantitatively detecting and manipulating guanine crystallization.