Mar. 17, 2026
Jie Wu, an engineering graduate student, was studying a type of striking white beetle found in Southeast Asia and attempting to figure out how to mimic its brilliant color when an unexpected discovery upended the experiment.
Jie and I had been hoping to identify naturally occurring whitening pigments that could be used in paper and paints. The beetle’s white exoskeleton is made from a compound called chitin, which is a type of carbohydrate – one that is also commonly found in crab and lobster shells.
Read the full article in The Conversation here: https://bit.ly/4uBteYr
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