Guanine-based photonic crystals in fish scales form from an amorphous precursor.

Dvir Gur, Yael Politi, Berta Sivan, Peter Fratzl, Steve Weiner, Lia Addadi

Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) 2013 Jan 2

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Starting from disorder: anhydrous guanine crystals compose the photonic arrays responsible for the skin and scale iridescence found in Japanese Koi fish. These guanine crystals were found to form in intracellular vesicles through an amorphous precursor phase. A combined cryo-SEM and synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction study showed the evolution of the crystals in great detail. Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Citation

Dvir Gur, Yael Politi, Berta Sivan, Peter Fratzl, Steve Weiner, Lia Addadi. Guanine-based photonic crystals in fish scales form from an amorphous precursor. Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English). 2013 Jan 2;52(1):388-91