ArticleNature chemical biology2025
Genetic control over biogenic crystal morphogenesis in zebrafish.
Article in Nature chemical biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Biosynthesis and Genetic Tuning of Guanine Crystals via Metabolic Engineering of Yeast.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Damselflies overcome color saturation barriers of photonic glasses via pigment loading and refractive index modulation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Gene Expression and Structural Differences Underpinning Black and White Colouration in Spiders.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Control Strategies in Guanine Biocrystallization.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Review
- Lysosome-related organelles orchestrate guanine crystal formation in pigment cells.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Spatial Relations between Coccoliths and Their Confining Membrane During Crystal Morphogenesis.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Cell type diversification and phenotype convergence underlying white fin-ornamentation of cyprinid fishes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Harnessing microalgae for the biosynthesis of molecular crystals.Nature biotechnology · 2026Article
- Chemical cues and molecular mechanisms suspected in abiotic stress communication.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- The Molecular Basis of Growth Control in Guanine Crystals.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- Acid enables biogenic crystallization.Nature chemical biology · 2026Article
- pH variations enable guanine crystal formation within iridosomes.Nature chemical biology · 2026Article
- Insertion of an invading retrovirus regulates a novel color trait in swordtail fish.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Purine Molecular Interactions Determine Anisotropic Shape of Zebrafish Biogenic Crystals.Small methods · 2025Article
- A nonclassical pathway of β-hematin crystal nucleation enables its suppression by antimalarials.Communications chemistry · 2025Article
- Guanine Crystal Formation at Physiological pH.Crystal growth & design · 2025Article
- Guanine Crystallization by Particle Attachment.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Specialized molecular pathways drive the formation of light-scattering assemblies in leucophores.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Revealing the Crystal Structure of the Purine Base Xanthine with Three-Dimensional (3D) Electron Diffraction.Crystal growth & design · 2025Article
- Genes and crystals are not so separate.Nature chemical biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Organisms evolve mechanisms that regulate the properties of biogenic crystals to support a wide range of functions, from vision and camouflage to communication and thermal regulation. Yet, the mechanism underlying the formation of diverse intracellular crystals remains enigmatic. Here we unravel the biochemical control over crystal morphogenesis in zebrafish iridophores. We show that the chemical composition of the crystals determines their shape, particularly through the ratio between the nucleobases guanine and hypoxanthine. We reveal that these variations in composition are genetically controlled through tissue-specific expression of specialized paralogs, which exhibit remarkable substrate selectivity. This orchestrated combination grants the organism with the capacity to generate a broad spectrum of crystal morphologies. Overall, our findings suggest a mechanism for the morphological and functional diversity of biogenic crystals and may, thus, inspire the development of genetically designed biomaterials and medical therapeutics.
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