Scallops Under Microscope at Abby Choi blog

Scallops Under Microscope. But scallop eyes — each about the size of a poppy seed — are so tiny and delicate that scientists have struggled to understand. For a paper published today in the journal science, researchers used a few different microscope techniques to get a detailed view of how the king scallop, or pecten. By freezing the mirror parts of the eye rapidly under high pressure and then looking at them in a scanning electron microscope, the team observed 20 to 30 layers of square guanine crystals, each about 1,000 nanometers wide and about 70 nanometers thick. For millions of years, scallops have been gazing at the world using dozens of eyes, each of which has a segmented mirror that’s uncannily similar to those in our grandest telescopes. Since 2012, vims has been working to restore wild bay scallops in the southern coastal bays of virginia's eastern shore. Each of a scallop’s eyes — it has up to 200 of them, each about a millimeter in diameter — contains millions of perfectly square, flat crystals that build up into a mirrored mosaic, new research. And scientists have just gotten a good look at one for the first time. The mirrors themselves do the focusing for scallops, and they pull that off by precisely structuring and shaping the guanine within living tissue, the researchers found.

For millions of years, scallops have been gazing at the world using dozens of eyes, each of which has a segmented mirror that’s uncannily similar to those in our grandest telescopes. By freezing the mirror parts of the eye rapidly under high pressure and then looking at them in a scanning electron microscope, the team observed 20 to 30 layers of square guanine crystals, each about 1,000 nanometers wide and about 70 nanometers thick. Each of a scallop’s eyes — it has up to 200 of them, each about a millimeter in diameter — contains millions of perfectly square, flat crystals that build up into a mirrored mosaic, new research. Since 2012, vims has been working to restore wild bay scallops in the southern coastal bays of virginia's eastern shore. And scientists have just gotten a good look at one for the first time. The mirrors themselves do the focusing for scallops, and they pull that off by precisely structuring and shaping the guanine within living tissue, the researchers found. But scallop eyes — each about the size of a poppy seed — are so tiny and delicate that scientists have struggled to understand. For a paper published today in the journal science, researchers used a few different microscope techniques to get a detailed view of how the king scallop, or pecten.

Scallops stock image. Image of shot, fresh, still, shellfish 51785195

Scallops Under Microscope The mirrors themselves do the focusing for scallops, and they pull that off by precisely structuring and shaping the guanine within living tissue, the researchers found. But scallop eyes — each about the size of a poppy seed — are so tiny and delicate that scientists have struggled to understand. For millions of years, scallops have been gazing at the world using dozens of eyes, each of which has a segmented mirror that’s uncannily similar to those in our grandest telescopes. The mirrors themselves do the focusing for scallops, and they pull that off by precisely structuring and shaping the guanine within living tissue, the researchers found. Since 2012, vims has been working to restore wild bay scallops in the southern coastal bays of virginia's eastern shore. By freezing the mirror parts of the eye rapidly under high pressure and then looking at them in a scanning electron microscope, the team observed 20 to 30 layers of square guanine crystals, each about 1,000 nanometers wide and about 70 nanometers thick. Each of a scallop’s eyes — it has up to 200 of them, each about a millimeter in diameter — contains millions of perfectly square, flat crystals that build up into a mirrored mosaic, new research. And scientists have just gotten a good look at one for the first time. For a paper published today in the journal science, researchers used a few different microscope techniques to get a detailed view of how the king scallop, or pecten.