Extended Data Fig. 4: Timelapse of pellicle melanin production.

a, Timelapse images of K. rhaeticus ptyr1 and ctyr1 pellicles. Pellicles labeled under HS, were incubated in HS media, while those pellicles labeled under Mel+ were incubated in PBS with 0.5 g/L L-tyrosine and 10 μM CuSO4. b, Graph displays the average brightness value of the pellicle images over 24 hours as melanin production occurs. Brightness value is derived from converting images from the RGB (red, green, blue) color space into the HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) color space, where the brightness value represents the value of a color as a percentage between black and peak luminosity, 0–100% respectively. Points represent the means while error bars represent the standard deviation of brightness values from 3 separate pellicles from K. rhaeticus ctyr1 and 4 separate pellicles from K. rhaeticus ptyr1.