1. Recent Articles
BUTTERFLIES CHANGE WING COLOUR IN
NEW YALE RESEARCH
Yale University scientists have chosen the
most fleeting of mediums for their
groundbreaking work on biomimicry: They've
changed the color of butterfly wings.
In so doing, they produced the first
structural color change in an animal by
influencing evolution. The discovery may have
implications for physicists and engineers trying
to use evolutionary principles in the design of new materials and devices.
What we did was to imagine a new target color for the wings of a butterfly,
without any knowledge of whether this color was achievable, and selected for it
gradually using populations of live butterflies," said Antónia Monteiro, a former
professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, now at the National University
of Singapore.
In this case, Monteiro and her team changed the wing color of the butterfly
Bicyclus anynana from brown to violet. They needed only six generations of selection.
Little is known about how structural colors in nature evolved, although
researchers have studied such mechanisms extensively in recent years. Most attempts
at biomimicry involve finding a desirable outcome in nature and simply trying to copy
it in the laboratory.

2. SCIENTISTS GROW AN ORGAN IN AN ANIMAL
FROM CELLS CREATED IN LAB
Laboratory-grown replacement organs have moved a step closer with the completion
of a new study. Scientists have grown a fully functional organ from transplanted
laboratory-created cells in a living animal for the first time.
Scientists have grown a fully functional organ from transplanted laboratory-created
cells in a living animal for the first time. They grew a working thymus - an
important organ that supplies the body with immune cells. Left: Specialised thymus
cells were created in the lab from a completely different cell type using a technique
called reprogramming. Right: The laboratory-created cells were transplanted onto a
mouse kidney to form an organised and functional mini-thymus in a living animal.
The researchers have created a thymus - an organ next to the heart that
produces immune cells known as T cells that are vital for guarding against disease.
They hope that, with further research, the discovery could lead to new
treatments for people with a weakened immune system.