Abstract
Scallops possess a visual system comprising up to 200 eyes, each containing a concave mirror rather than a lens to focus light. The hierarchical organization of the multilayered mirror is controlled for image formation, from the component guanine crystals at the nanoscale to the complex three-dimensional morphology at the millimeter level. The layered structure of the mirror is tuned to reflect the wavelengths of light penetrating the scallop's habitat and is tiled with a mosaic of square guanine crystals, which reduces optical aberrations. The mirror forms images on a double-layered retina used for separately imaging the peripheral and central fields of view. The tiled, off-axis mirror of the scallop eye bears a striking resemblance to the segmented mirrors of reflecting telescopes.
| Original language | English |
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| Pages (from-to) | 1172-1175 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Science |
| Volume | 358 |
| Issue number | 6367 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2017 |
Funding
We thank C. Jones of Haven Diving Services for supplying the scallops and for the photographs in Fig. 1, A and B, and A. Hirsch for her help in the analysis of TEM images. We thank B. Geiger for the use of DeltaVision fluorescence microscopy. Electron microscopy studies were supported by the Irving and Cherna Moskowitz Center for Nano and Bio-Nano Imaging at the Weizmann Institute of Science. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant 2012\224330*), the Crown Center of Photonics, and the I-CORE (Israeli Center for Research Excellence) “Circle of Light.” B.A.P. is the recipient of a Human Frontiers Cross-Disciplinary Postdoctoral Fellowship. G.J.T. is supported by a stipend from Carl Tryggers Stiftelse (CTS15:38). L.A. and S.W. are the incumbents of the Dorothy and Patrick Gorman Professorial Chair of Biological Ultrastructure and the Dr. Trude Burchardt Professorial Chair of Structural Biology, respectively