The First Description of Resilin

of Zoology at the University of Cambridge in the late 1950s that I heard, with great excitement, Torkel Weis-Fogh describing resilin.In his masterly first written description, Weis-Fogh explained its roles in the thorax of flying insects: as elastic tendons in dragonflies and as elastic wing hinges in locusts (Weis-Fogh, 1960).He also showed that these structures could be strained for weeks without plastic deformation and, by simple tests, that the elasticity was rubber-like.This was in contrast to commercial rubbers which are polymeric unsaturated hydrocarbons: resilin is a cuticular protein that, typically, is deposited after ecdysis.Weis-Fogh commented on the ability of resilin structures to snap back after deformation but showed that their rubbery nature was affected by their hydration and pH.He described a simple test to identify resilin: with very dilute solutions of Methylene Blue or Toluidine Blue, the protein stains a deep sapphire blue (Fig. 1B).