Researchers have discovered the scutoid, a geometric shape adopted by epithelial cells that enables the cells to minimize energy use and maximize packing stability during tissue bending.
The discovery is the result of a United States-European Union collaboration between the teams of Luis M. Escudero (Seville University, Spain) and that of Javier Buceta, associate professor of bioengineering and a faculty member in the chemical and biomolecular engineering department at Lehigh. Pedro Gómez-Gálvez and Pablo Vicente-Munuera are the first authors of this work, which also includes scientists from the Andalusian Center of Developmental Biology and the Severo Ochoa Center of Molecular Biology, among others.
