Engineered Bacteria Mass‑Produce Octopus Pigment — A Breakthrough for Sunscreens, Paints and Sensors

How scientists turned a cephalopod pigment into a scalable, bio‑based material

Cephalopods such as octopuses, squid and cuttlefish can rapidly change their skin color to blend into their environment. That capability is partly driven by a natural pigment called xanthommatin, which has attracted interest as an antioxidant, a responsive colorant and a potential ingredient in products ranging from paints to natural sunscreens. Research into xanthommatin has been limited because extracting it from animals yields tiny amounts, and conventional laboratory synthesis is slow and low-yielding.

Now, a team of researchers reports a method that produces as much as 1,000 times more xanthommatin than earlier techniques by getting a single engineered bacterium to make it. The work, published in Nature Biotechnology, was led by Leah Bushin (Stanford University) with senior author Bradley Moore (UC San Diego and Scripps Oceanography).

“We needed a whole new approach to address this problem,” said Leah Bushin, chemical biologist and natural products chemist at Stanford. “Essentially, we came up with a way to trick the bacteria into making more of the material that we needed.”

The key innovation was tying pigment production to the bacterium’s survival. The researchers engineered a strain so the cell could only grow if it produced both xanthommatin and formic acid — a compound that fuels cell growth. In effect, the microbe is placed in a self‑reinforcing loop: if it fails to generate the pigment and formic acid, it cannot thrive. This survival‑linked design forces the microbe to channel its metabolism toward large‑scale pigment production.

Producing large quantities of xanthommatin opens the door to exploring its properties more deeply: testing its antioxidant behavior, assessing suitability as a color-changing material, and developing practical applications in cosmetics, paints and sensors. According to the authors, the U.S. Department of Defense has also expressed interest, and the team is already discussing opportunities with a cosmetics company.

“Large quantities of a previously rare material like xanthommatin allow scientists to explore its properties in a host of ways as an antioxidant, pigment or color‑changing material in many types of products,” said Bradley Moore. “Thanks to federal funding, we’ve unlocked a promising new pathway for designing nature‑inspired materials that are better for people and the planet.”

Beyond immediate product development, the authors suggest the survival‑linked production strategy could be applied to other target molecules, potentially helping industry shift some supply chains away from fossil‑fuel derivatives toward nature‑inspired alternatives. That said, translating this advance into commercial products will require further work on scale‑up, regulatory assessment, safety testing and sustainable manufacturing practices.

Bottom line: By reprogramming bacteria so that pigment production is essential for growth, researchers achieved dramatic yield increases for xanthommatin—creating new experimental and commercial possibilities for a once‑rare cephalopod pigment.