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From 2011.igem.org

Preliminary observations

In order to get a real sense of what we were looking to achieve in our project, we felt that it was important to make some observations of native squid reflectin in vivo. We therefore obtained several specimens of loligo opalescens and loligo vulgaris squid from a local seafood restaurant and an online fishing bait store for dissection. We chose these species because the whole family of loliginid squid has been identified to contain reflectin, and these particular species were the only members of the family available to us. We used a confocal microscope to observe iridescent behaviour in eye and mantle tissue, by the following protocol. The stunning images produced provided a very useful reference to help us to identify what recombinant (well folded) reflectin could look like in E. coli, and definitely enthused the team to obtain bactiridescence!

References

[1] Izumi et al. Changes in reflectin protein phosphorylation are associated with dynamic iridescence in squid. J. R. Soc. Interface 6 March 2010 vol. 7 no. 44 549-560