The goopy proteinaceous environment ("Extra Cellular Matrix") between living cells has such a strong effect on the communication and structure of tissues. And using concepts like tension and adhesion as signals, the ECM seems to act to communicate and coordinate cells across long distances.
The work here is some of the more 'complicated' 3D tissue engineering - done in an effort to understand the generic organizational design rules of tissue construction. Their control of multiple cell types, in 3D, at single-cell resolution lets them start to ask (and answer) interesting questions about how to go about designing (and altering) tissues of the kind that we are made of.
And with some of that knowledge those communities (tissues) even seem engineerable:
"The predictable relationship between strain and curvature observed in these cell-ECM composites allowed us to program the autonomous folding of tissues into a variety of 3D architectures bearing striking similarity to structures found in vivo, as well as into entirely novel geometries. The folding process is analogous to the autonomous folding of abiotic materials into complex shapes."
The goopy proteinaceous environment ("Extra Cellular Matrix") between living cells has such a strong effect on the communication and structure of tissues. And using concepts like tension and adhesion as signals, the ECM seems to act to communicate and coordinate cells across long distances.
The work here is some of the more 'complicated' 3D tissue engineering - done in an effort to understand the generic organizational design rules of tissue construction. Their control of multiple cell types, in 3D, at single-cell resolution lets them start to ask (and answer) interesting questions about how to go about designing (and altering) tissues of the kind that we are made of.
And with some of that knowledge those communities (tissues) even seem engineerable:
"The predictable relationship between strain and curvature observed in these cell-ECM composites allowed us to program the autonomous folding of tissues into a variety of 3D architectures bearing striking similarity to structures found in vivo, as well as into entirely novel geometries. The folding process is analogous to the autonomous folding of abiotic materials into complex shapes."