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Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue
- westurner 3y ago> In a study published in Nature Physics, they conclude that sheets of epithelial tissue, which make up skin and sheathe internal organs, act like liquid crystals — materials that are ordered like solids but flow like liquids. To make that connection, the team demonstrated that two distinct symmetries coexist in epithelial tissue. These different symmetries, which determine how liquid crystals respond to physical forces, simply appear at different scales. "Epithelia are multiscale active liquid crystals" (2023) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02179-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02179-0