Researchers from Bielefeld and Cambridge make the geometry of multicellular life visible.
How does the collective interplay of many individual cells give rise to a perfectly shaped organism? This question lies at the heart of a new study published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, USA). An international research team involving Bielefeld University has investigated how cells, despite heterogeneous protein production, work together to create an ordered structure outside themselves: the extracellular matrix (ECM).