Mighty Morpho

Fluttering around tropical forests of Costa Rica, Morpho butterflies shimmer in shades of blue thanks to tiny structures on their wings. Their scales bend or refract light in different patterns – appearing to change colour as they tilt and twist in the sun. This iridescence is beautiful, but also useful in surprising ways. Light is also changed when shining down through human tissue samples on a microscope, although the subtle differences brought by thicker, cancerous tissue are often difficult to spot. Researchers find bouncing this light off a Morpho wing exaggerates the elliptical polarisation created in breast cancer samples, allowing these samples to be identified more easily. While Morpho wings may not be available to every lab, the technique may inspire new approaches to use structural colour to tease apart differences between healthy and tissue thickened by cancer, fibrosis or heart disease.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Gordon Zyla et al, in Sci. Reports, Dec 2017
• Research from work by Paula Kirya and colleagues, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Program of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Advanced Materials, January 2025