Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
4 years ago

QnAs with Carlos Taboada

QnAs with Carlos Taboada
Tinsley H. Davis
A molecule that would be toxic to most animals provides the characteristic blue-green color of hundreds of frog species. In a recent PNAS article (1), biologist Carlos Taboada reports how the typically toxic pigment biliverdin binds to members of a family of serpin proteins to produce a pathway for green coloration in frogs. Taboada is a postdoctoral fellow in biology at Duke University and has been working with frogs since his undergraduate days in Argentina, shifting focus from studies of anatomy and histology to biochemistry and engineering. Taboada discusses the findings from his PNAS article. Carlos Taboada. Image credit: Laura Andrade (photographer). > PNAS:To the human eye, the frogs you studied appear green. How are they different? > Taboada:Most green animals—chameleons, lizards, geckoes, [and] many frogs and salamanders, too—have chromatophore cells. In those animals, all of the color that we see comes from that really thin layer of cells. > > In the species that we describe (1), there is a huge concentration of this previously unidentified blue protein that binds biliverdin. In the frog, it was a mystery. How can the animals have such huge concentrations of biliverdin? The physiology of that was weird because in …

Publisher URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Pnas-RssFeedOfEarlyEditionArticles/~3/SxDZejy_t6c/2017996117.short

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2017996117

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