Researchers look to ‘brilliant whiteness’ in shrimp stripes to find E171 alternative
The unique quality in the material found in the cleaner shrimp is that it can form dense scattering layers without compromising the scattering properties, explained Professor Dan Oron, from the Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
“For ‘normal’ materials, scattering drops beyond a certain density of scatterers, this is usually termed ‘optical crowding’. This is due to the birefringence of the particles; that is, their special optical anisotropy,” he told FoodNavigator.
Explain the main challenges the researchers now expect to encounter as they make a white pigment that scatters like the white stripes on a The Pacific Cleaner Shrimp, he told us: “Forming such nanoscale structures is very challenging from any synthetic chemistry point of view. Clearly, in the biological system the materials synthesis is highly regulated. The main challenge is definitely to synthetically produce such anisotropic [a substance of which the properties vary depending on the direction] nanospheres.”
Start-ups meanwhile are attempting to s that scatter light in a similar manner to the Cyphocilus beetle's shell. Are there any other animals that could be investigated?“We looked at quite a few creatures who live underwater, as optics in an aqueous environment is more demanding,” Oron said. “Yet, there are so many species, that it seems unreasonable that there are not other animals exhibiting this or related phenomena.”
Dr. Ben Palmer from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev added: “It is really one of the first times we have learned an entirely new principle from studying an organism. The shrimp has overcome a seemingly fundamental hurdle in optics by creating particles with this special arrangement of molecules. Now the question is, how can we replicate this effect for creating new materials we could use as food additives in white bread, or in white paint and other applications?”
Reference
Brilliant whiteness in shrimp from ultra-thin layers of birefringent nanospheresNature Photonics
DOI: 10.1038/s41566-023-01182-4