{"id":493485,"date":"2018-07-03T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=e925b7599b13209d27301cdcd3d735f9"},"modified":"2018-07-03T11:00:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T15:00:06","slug":"scientists-use-crispr-to-tweak-butterfly-wing-color-change-wing-scale-surface-structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=493485","title":{"rendered":"Scientists use CRISPR to tweak butterfly wing color, change wing scale surface structure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pigments and the fine structure of butterfly wing scales work together to generate a mosaic of colors and patterns that help the insect camouflage or attract mates. On July 3, in the journal Cell Reports, scientists show how it only takes a few pigment genes to modify both the color and the morphology of wing scales. The researchers used CRISPR\/Cas9 to tweak wing colors of the squinting bush brown butterfly of East Africa Bicyclus anynana and found that it resulted in changes to the scales&#8217; surface structure and rigidity, as well as color. The results show how pigmentation genes have dual roles in the formation of wing scales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pigments and the fine structure of butterfly wing scales work together to generate a mosaic of colors and patterns that help the insect camouflage or attract mates. On July 3, in the journal Cell Reports, scientists show how it only takes a few pigment&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=493485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493486,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493485\/revisions\/493486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=493485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=493485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=493485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}