Wagner et al. show that dinoflagellate microalgae can biosynthesize crystalline materials which would otherwise be difficult to make synthetically. Scaling this up could eventually offer a new industrial approach for producing such materials. [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-026-03006-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-026-03006-6)

Crystalline materials for optical applications are synthesized in living dinoflagellates.