Gene

Purine

Guanine

Crystal (programming language)

Materials science

Hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase

Dopant

Biochemistry

Computer science

Hypoxanthine

Purine metabolism

Organic chemistry

Xanthine

Mathematics

Nucleotide

Doping

Mutant

Enzyme

Mathematical analysis

Crystallography

Chemistry

Programming language

Optoelectronics

Base (topology)

Journal of the American Chemical Society

Highly reflective crystals of the nucleotide base guanine are widely distributed in animal coloration and visual systems. Organisms precisely control the morphology and organization of the crystals to optimize different optical effects, but little is known about how this is achieved. Here we examine a fundamental question that has remained unanswered after over 100 years of research on guanine:

Biogenic Guanine Crystals Are Solid Solutions of Guanine and Other Purine Metabolites