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takyon writes:

Geometry Has a New Shape. Meet the 'Scutoid.'

This shape — new to math, not to nature — is the form that a group of cells in the body takes in order to pack tightly and efficiently into the tricky curves of organs, scientists reported in a new paper, published July 27 in the journal Nature Communications [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05376-1] [DX].

The cells, called epithelial cells, line most surfaces in an animal's body, including the skin, other organs and blood vessels. These cells are typically described in biology books as column-like or having some sort of prism shape — two parallel faces and a certain number of parallelogram sides. Sometimes, they can also be described as a bottle-like form of a prism called a "frustum."

But by using computational modeling, the group of scientists found that epithelial cells can take a new shape, previously unrecognized by mathematics, when they have to pack together tightly to form the bending parts of organs. The scientists named the shape "scutoid" after a triangle-shaped part of a beetle's thorax called the scutellum. The scutoid itself looks like a bent prism with five slightly slanted sides and one corner cut off.

The researchers later confirmed the presence of the new shape in the epithelial cells of fruit-fly salivary glands and embryos.

By packing into scutoids, the cells minimize their energy use and maximize how stable they are when they pack, the researchers said in a statement. And uncovering such elegant mathematics of nature can provide engineers with new models to inspire delicate human-made tissues.

A newborn Wikipedia entry.

Original Submission