Cephalopod-inspired optical engineering of human cells

摘要

An illustration of a female squid that switches a white stripe on its mantle from nearly transparent (left) to opaque white (right). (Inset, left) An illustration of a cross-section of the white stripe that shows the epidermis, chromatophore layer, leucophore layer, and underlying muscle. (Inset, middle left) An illustration of a leucophore, wherein the membrane contains an embedded arrangement of proteinaceous structures called leucosomes. The arrangement enables the cell to diffusely reflect, i.e. scatter, visible light. (Inset, middle right) An illustration of a leucosome, which contains assembled reflectin proteins. (Inset, right) A generalized illustration of a reflectin isoform. (Left) A schematic of a human cell before transfection, which contains organelles as its only subcellular structures. The cell directly transmits (purple arrows) most of the incident visible light (black arrow) with relatively minimal scattering (green arrows). (Middle) A schematic of a human cell after the expression of reflectin and the formation of photonic architectures, i.e. a disordered arrangement of high refractive index, reflectin-based structures (orange circles), within its interior. The cell diffusely transmits and/or diffusely reflects, i.e. scatters (green arrows), some of the incident visible light (black arrow). (Right) A schematic of a human cell after exposure to a chemical stimulus that influences reflectin assembly, which demonstrates a plausible modification of the geometries and/or arrangements of its photonic architectures (orange circles). The cell now diffusely transmits and/or diffusely reflects, i.e. scatters (green arrows), a different amount of the incident visible light (black arrow).