Reverse and forward engineering of Drosophila corneal nanocoatings
Reverse and forward engineering of Drosophila corneal nanocoatings
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DOI：
10.1038/s41586-020-2707-9
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发表时间：
2020-09-17
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Katanaev, Vladimir L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kryuchkov, Mikhail;Bilousov, Oleksii;Katanaev, Vladimir L.
确定在果蝇上观察到的纳米结构的构建块，然后用于创建具有抗反射和抗粘附特性的人工纳米结构。昆虫眼睛具有抗反射涂层，这是由于角膜表面上的纳米结构在空气和透镜材料之间产生折射率梯度（1，2）。这些纳米涂层还显示出提供抗粘附功能（3）。在节肢动物中，角膜纳米涂层的形态非常多样，具有乳头状结构，可以组织成阵列或融合成脊状结构（4）。这种多样性可以归因于艾伦·图灵（Alan Turing）（5）开发的反应扩散机制（4）和图案化原理，这些原理在许多生物环境中都有应用（6）。昆虫角膜上的纳米涂层是这种图灵模式的一个例子，也是纳米级图灵模式的第一个已知例子（4）。在这里，我们展示了一个明确的联系之间的形态和功能的纳米涂层onDrosophilacorneas。我们发现，由单独的突起组成的纳米涂层具有更好的抗反射性能，而部分合并的结构具有更好的抗粘附性能。我们使用生物化学分析和遗传修饰技术来逆向工程蛋白质视网膜和角膜蜡作为纳米结构的构建块。在图灵模式的上下文中，这些构建块分别扮演激活剂和抑制剂的角色。然后，我们建立了低成本的Retinin生产，并将这种合成蛋白质与蜡混合，以正向工程化各种具有昆虫样形态和抗粘附或抗反射功能的人工纳米涂层。因此，我们的逆向和正向工程相结合的方法提供了一种从可生物降解材料经济地生产功能性纳米结构涂层的方法。
The building blocks of the nanostructures observed onDrosophilacorneas are determined, and then used to create artificial nanostructures with anti-reflective and anti-adhesive properties.Insect eyes have an anti-reflective coating, owing to nanostructures on the corneal surface creating a gradient of refractive index between that of air and that of the lens material(1,2). These nanocoatings have also been shown to provide anti-adhesive functionality(3). The morphology of corneal nanocoatings are very diverse in arthropods, with nipple-like structures that can be organized into arrays or fused into ridge-like structures(4). This diversity can be attributed to a reaction-diffusion mechanism(4)and patterning principles developed by Alan Turing(5), which have applications in numerous biological settings(6). The nanocoatings on insect corneas are one example of such Turing patterns, and the first known example of nanoscale Turing patterns(4). Here we demonstrate a clear link between the morphology and function of the nanocoatings onDrosophilacorneas. We find that nanocoatings that consist of individual protrusions have better anti-reflective properties, whereas partially merged structures have better anti-adhesion properties. We use biochemical analysis and genetic modification techniques to reverse engineer the protein Retinin and corneal waxes as the building blocks of the nanostructures. In the context of Turing patterns, these building blocks fulfil the roles of activator and inhibitor, respectively. We then establish low-cost production of Retinin, and mix this synthetic protein with waxes to forward engineer various artificial nanocoatings with insect-like morphology and anti-adhesive or anti-reflective function. Our combined reverse- and forward-engineering approach thus provides a way to economically produce functional nanostructured coatings from biodegradable materials.