Vibrant reds, blues, greens and yellows have been made without any dye or paint. Instead the colours arise from an intricate pattern of virus particles that reflects only certain wavelengths of light.
The patterns work in a similar way to those that produce startling colours on the faces and bills of some monkeys and birds. Now that these patterns can be made to order in the lab, they could form the basis of bleach-resistant clothing.
The blue bills of ruddy ducks, the blue faces and rumps of mandrills, and the blue scrotum of vervet monkeys all get their colour from the protein collagen. Unlike pigments, whose colours arise because the molecules selectively absorb certain wavelengths of visible light, collagen has no inherent colour – it makes up the transparent lenses of human eyes, for example.
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