Buckeye wings grown in culture

[nipam]

Hi All,

A bit different than the other movies posted here, but I thought some of you might be interested to see these movies of wings growing outside of the pupal case that have been generated by Ryan Null, a student in my lab at UC Berkeley.

A forewing and hindwing wing disk were dissected out from a 4 day old pupae of Junonia coenia (Buckeye). The disks were then grown in tissue culture media and filmed (time-lapse) as the colors came in over the next 2 days. We are developing this technique in order to learn the molecular and genetic basis for scale growth and the development of color patterns.




Here are two forewings from Vanessa cardui (Painted Lady).  Also dissected out from a 4 day old pupa and filmed for about 2.5 days.




We are now focused on culturing wings of Morphos and Papilio palinurus in order to study the development of the chitin patterns that generate structural colors.

Happy holidays to everyone.

Cheers,

Nipam

[Deleted]

Thanks for sharing, quite an interesting topic. Did the student do a time lapse with higher magnification by chance?

[nipam]

We are trying movies at much higher magnification to watch the cytoskeleton develop inside the scale cells as they grow, but still have a number of technical difficulties to overcome. In the next few days I'll post a 3D movie I made to show the internal skeleton (made of actin) inside the scale cells.

[anthony]

Very unusual and interesting, looking forward to updates.

[bluemoth]

As moat of you know I have been rearing Buckeyes for the past 3 years on and off trying to get strange colors or patterns in the wings so I can sell them to collectors. I hope Ryan Null would be willing to share any genetic info on color or patters he learns from his study. He is welcome to PM me.