Protein Desert in a Salty Sea

While trying to prepare thin films of a protein found in cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish), we noticed a very interesting star drying pattern that exposed the bottom layer of a platinum substrate. This protein called "reflectin" is what allows for cephalopods to change color and camouflage and this drying phenomena has not been seen elsewhere in literature for any other protein as far as we have seen making this capture unique in all regards!

We were using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to image the drying patterns of 9 uM reflectin protein. We only noticed this drying phenomena when the drop cast solution containing the reflectin also had 25 mM sodium acetate at pH 4.