Octopus Camouflage Might Give Us Higher Sunscreen

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Cephalopods like squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish are remarkably sneaky—they imitate their marine environments to evade each predators and prey. These skilled camouflage abilities have intrigued scientists as way back as 350 B.C., when Aristotle took interest in octopuses’ shifting hues. We now know that this intelligent camouflage course of entails a color-changing pigment referred to as xanthommatin, which can also be what provides some bugs like butterflies their vibrant colours.

Xanthommatin might supply main advantages for people, too. It could possibly be harnessed to make hue-shifting shows and dyes, for instance, and simpler sunscreen. The pigment absorbs ultraviolet mild all through the seen spectrum and has been found to boost the effectiveness of chemical sunscreens. (It may be less harmful for marine environments.)

So researchers have spent a long time attempting to supply xanthommatin within the lab and reap the benefits of these tantalizing properties. Now, one workforce of scientists says they’ve discovered a solution to churn out important quantities of xanthommatin with the assistance of a modified microbe.

Read extra: “Nature’s Invisibility Cloak”

Thanks to some genetic tweaks, these scientists had been in a position to immediate a bacterium to supply as much as 1,000 occasions extra xanthommatin than different genetic engineering strategies, as reported in a current paper in Nature Biotechnology.

“We needed a whole new approach to address this problem,” said lead writer Leah Bushin, a chemical biologist previously on the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in a press release. “Essentially, we came up with a way to trick the bacteria into making more of the material that we needed.”

To idiot this microbe, Bushin and her colleagues tied its survival to manufacturing xanthommatin. They modified the genes of a soil-dwelling bacterium referred to as Pseudomonas putida, forcing it to create each xanthommatin and a chemical referred to as formic acid—which, in flip, propelled the cell’s development. This spurred “a self-sustaining loop that drives pigment production,” in keeping with the assertion.

The workforce additionally pinpointed the genetic mutations that allowed these engineered microbes to pump up the quantity, and chosen for strains that solely require a single carbon supply. These key particulars make xanthommatin manufacturing as environment friendly and sustainable as attainable.

It’s nonetheless early days for this potential bacterial boon, however the paper authors say they’ve acquired curiosity from cosmetics firms who’d like to include the substance into pure sunscreens. Xanthommatin may also make its means into color-changing paints for customers or environmental sensors. But it’s as much as these mighty microbes and whether or not they’re as much as the demand.

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Lead picture: Mike Bartick / Ocean Image Bank

• Molly Glick

  Posted on November 5, 2025

  Molly Glick is the e-newsletter editor of Nautilus.