Scientists Unlock the Light-Bending Secrets of Squid Skin

upstart writes:

Scientists unlock the light-bending secrets of squid skin:

Squid are famous for flashing from glass-clear to kaleidoscopic in the blink of an eye, but biologists have long puzzled over the physical trick behind the act.

A research team led by the University of California, Irvine, joined by cephalopod experts at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, took that mystery head-on.

By peering into squid skin in three dimensions, they uncovered a hidden forest of nano-columns built from an uncommon protein called reflectin.

How squid skin bends light

These columns act much like tiny mirrors, bouncing or passing light depending on how close together they sit.

Alon Gorodetsky, an expert in chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine, is the senior author of the research.

"In nature, many animals use Bragg reflectors [which selectively transmit and reflect light at specific wavelengths] for structural coloration," he said. "A squid's ability to rapidly and reversibly transition from transparent to colored is remarkable."

"We found that cells containing specialized subcellular columnar structures with sinusoidal refractive index distributions enable the squid to achieve such feats."

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