ArticleNature communications2024
The actin cytoskeleton plays multiple roles in structural colour formation in butterfly wing scales.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Beyond the Classics: The Synergy of AI and Genomics Reveals an Expanded Repertoire of Pigmentation Genes.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2026Review
- Hot temperature during development alters iridescence inPNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Light-guided spectral sculpting in chiral azobenzene-doped cholesteric liquid crystals for reconfigurable narrowband unpolarized light sources.Nanophotonics (Berlin, Germany) · 2025Article
- Hierarchical woven fibrillar structures in developing single gyroids in butterflies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Single-nucleus transcriptomics of wing sexual dimorphism and scale cell specialization in sulphur butterflies.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Lepidopteran scale cells derive from sensory organ precursors through a canonical lineage.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2025Article
- Article
- Elucidating nanostructural organization and photonic properties of butterfly wing scales using hyperspectral microscopy.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
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Abstract
Vivid structural colours in butterflies are caused by photonic nanostructures scattering light. Structural colours evolved for numerous biological signalling functions and have important technological applications. Optically, such structures are well understood, however insight into their development in vivo remains scarce. We show that actin is intimately involved in structural colour formation in butterfly wing scales. Using comparisons between iridescent (structurally coloured) and non-iridescent scales in adult and developing H. sara, we show that iridescent scales have more densely packed actin bundles leading to an increased density of reflective ridges. Super-resolution microscopy across three distantly related butterfly species reveals that actin is repeatedly re-arranged during scale development and crucially when the optical nanostructures are forming. Furthermore, actin perturbation experiments at these later developmental stages resulted in near total loss of structural colour in H. sara. Overall, this shows that actin plays a vital and direct templating role during structural colour formation in butterfly scales, providing ridge patterning mechanisms that are likely universal across lepidoptera.
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