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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @10:33PM
some different drawings and articles from around the Web:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175297-a-new-shape-called-the-scutoid-has-been-discovered-in-our-cells/ [newscientist.com]
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-brand-new-scutoid-shape-12989059 [mirror.co.uk]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutoid [wikipedia.org]