Scutoid

Last updated
A scutoid compared with a prism, frustum, and prismatoid Prism, frustum, prismatoid and scutoid.svg
A scutoid compared with a prism, frustum, and prismatoid
Two 5-6 scutoids, flipped and attached Scutoids.gif
Two 5-6 scutoids, flipped and attached

A scutoid is a particular type of geometric solid between two parallel surfaces. The boundary of each of the surfaces (and of all the other parallel surfaces between them) either is a polygon or resembles a polygon, but is not necessarily planar, and the vertices of the two end polygons are joined by either a curve or a Y-shaped connection on at least one of the edges, but not necessarily all of the edges. Scutoids present at least one vertex between these two planes. Scutoids are not necessarily convex, and lateral faces are not necessarily planar, so several scutoids can pack together to fill all the space between the two parallel surfaces. They may be more generally described as a mix between a frustum and a prismatoid. [1] [2]

Contents

Scutellum on heteropteran (no. 26) Heteroptera morphology-d.svg
Scutellum on heteropteran (no. 26)

Naming

The object was first described by Gómez-Gálvez et al. in a paper entitled Scutoids are a geometrical solution to three-dimensional packing of epithelia, and published in July 2018. [1] Officially, the name scutoid was coined because of its resemblance to the shape of the scutum and scutellum in some insects, such as beetles in the subfamily Cetoniinae. [1] Unofficially, Clara Grima has stated that while working on the project, the shape was temporarily called an Escu-toid as a joke after the biology group leader Luis M. Escudero. [3] [4] Since his last name, "Escudero", means "squire" (from Latin scutarius = shield-bearer), the temporary name was modified slightly to become "scutoid".

Appearance in nature

The shape, however odd, is a building block of multicellular organisms; complex life might never have emerged on Earth without it.

Alan Burdick, We Are All Scutoids: A Brand New Shape, Explained [2]
A beetle with a scutellum, for which the shape was officially named. Protaetia-cuprea-ignicollis-IZE-257.jpg
A beetle with a scutellum, for which the shape was officially named.

Epithelial cells adopt the "scutoidal shape" under certain circumstances. [1] In epithelia, cells can 3D-pack as scutoids, facilitating tissue curvature. This is fundamental to the shaping of the organs during development. [1] [5] [6]

"Scutoid is a prismatoid to which one extra mid-level vertex has been added. This extra vertex forces some of the "faces" of the resulting object to curve. This means that Scutoids are not polyhedra, because not all of their faces are planar. ... For the computational biologists who created/discovered the Scutoid, the key property of the shape is that it can combine with itself and other geometric objects like frustums to create 3D packings of epithelial cells."
- Laura Taalman [7] [8]

Cells in the developing lung epithelium have been found to have more complex shapes than the term "scutoid", inspired by the simple scutellum of beetles, suggests. [9] When "scutoids" exhibit multiple Y-shaped connections or vertices along their axis, they have therefore been called "punakoids" instead, [10] as their shape is more reminiscent of the Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki, New Zealand.

Potential uses

The scutoid explains how epithelial cells (the cells that line and protect organs such as the skin) efficiently pack in three dimensions. [1] As epithelial tissue bends or grows, the cells have to take on new shapes to pack together using the least amount of energy possible, and until the scutoid's discovery, it was assumed that epithelial cells packed in mostly frustums, as well as other prism-like shapes. [3] Now, with the knowledge of how epithelial cells pack, it opens up many new possibilities in terms of artificial organs. The scutoid may be applied to making better artificial organs, allowing for things like effective organ replacements, recognizing whether a person's cells are packing correctly or not, and ways to fix that problem. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dual polyhedron</span> Polyhedron associated with another by swapping vertices for faces

In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polyhedron</span> 3D shape with flat faces, straight edges and sharp corners

In geometry, a polyhedron is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geometric primitive</span> Basic shapes represented in vector graphics

In vector computer graphics, CAD systems, and geographic information systems, geometric primitive is the simplest geometric shape that the system can handle. Sometimes the subroutines that draw the corresponding objects are called "geometric primitives" as well. The most "primitive" primitives are point and straight line segment, which were all that early vector graphics systems had.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prism (geometry)</span> Solid with 2 parallel n-gonal bases connected by n parallelograms

In geometry, a prism is a polyhedron comprising an n-sided polygon base, a second base which is a translated copy of the first, and n other faces, necessarily all parallelograms, joining corresponding sides of the two bases. All cross-sections parallel to the bases are translations of the bases. Prisms are named after their bases, e.g. a prism with a pentagonal base is called a pentagonal prism. Prisms are a subclass of prismatoids.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epithelium</span> Tissue lining the surfaces of organs in animals

Epithelium or epithelial tissue is a thin, continuous, protective layer of compactly packed cells with a little intercellular matrix. Epithelial tissues line the outer surfaces of organs and blood vessels throughout the body, as well as the inner surfaces of cavities in many internal organs. An example is the epidermis, the outermost layer of the skin. Epithelial tissue is one of the four basic types of animal tissue, along with connective tissue, muscle tissue and nervous tissue. These tissues also lack blood or lymph supply. The tissue is supplied by nerves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tessellation</span> Tiling of a plane in mathematics

A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polygon mesh</span> Set of polygons to define a 3D model

In 3D computer graphics and solid modeling, a polygon mesh is a collection of vertices, edges and faces that defines the shape of a polyhedral object. The faces usually consist of triangles, quadrilaterals (quads), or other simple convex polygons (n-gons), since this simplifies rendering, but may also be more generally composed of concave polygons, or even polygons with holes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euclidean tilings by convex regular polygons</span> Subdivision of the plane into polygons that are all regular

Euclidean plane tilings by convex regular polygons have been widely used since antiquity. The first systematic mathematical treatment was that of Kepler in his Harmonices Mundi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polygonal modeling</span> Object modeling method

In 3D computer graphics, polygonal modeling is an approach for modeling objects by representing or approximating their surfaces using polygon meshes. Polygonal modeling is well suited to scanline rendering and is therefore the method of choice for real-time computer graphics. Alternate methods of representing 3D objects include NURBS surfaces, subdivision surfaces, and equation-based representations used in ray tracers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triangular tiling</span> Regular tiling of the plane

In geometry, the triangular tiling or triangular tessellation is one of the three regular tilings of the Euclidean plane, and is the only such tiling where the constituent shapes are not parallelogons. Because the internal angle of the equilateral triangle is 60 degrees, six triangles at a point occupy a full 360 degrees. The triangular tiling has Schläfli symbol of {3,6}.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb</span> Quasiregular space-filling tesselation

The tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb is a quasiregular space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of alternating regular octahedra and tetrahedra in a ratio of 1:2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Circle packing theorem</span> Describes the possible tangency relations between circles with disjoint interiors

The circle packing theorem describes the possible tangency relations between circles in the plane whose interiors are disjoint. A circle packing is a connected collection of circles whose interiors are disjoint. The intersection graph of a circle packing is the graph having a vertex for each circle, and an edge for every pair of circles that are tangent. If the circle packing is on the plane, or, equivalently, on the sphere, then its intersection graph is called a coin graph; more generally, intersection graphs of interior-disjoint geometric objects are called tangency graphs or contact graphs. Coin graphs are always connected, simple, and planar. The circle packing theorem states that these are the only requirements for a graph to be a coin graph:

In polyhedral combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, Steinitz's theorem is a characterization of the undirected graphs formed by the edges and vertices of three-dimensional convex polyhedra: they are exactly the 3-vertex-connected planar graphs. That is, every convex polyhedron forms a 3-connected planar graph, and every 3-connected planar graph can be represented as the graph of a convex polyhedron. For this reason, the 3-connected planar graphs are also known as polyhedral graphs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tessellation (computer graphics)</span> Computer graphics terminology

In computer graphics, tessellation is the dividing of datasets of polygons presenting objects in a scene into suitable structures for rendering. Especially for real-time rendering, data is tessellated into triangles, for example in OpenGL 4.0 and Direct3D 11.

In graph drawing and geometric graph theory, a Tutte embedding or barycentric embedding of a simple, 3-vertex-connected, planar graph is a crossing-free straight-line embedding with the properties that the outer face is a convex polygon and that each interior vertex is at the average of its neighbors' positions. If the outer polygon is fixed, this condition on the interior vertices determines their position uniquely as the solution to a system of linear equations. Solving the equations geometrically produces a planar embedding. Tutte's spring theorem, proven by W. T. Tutte, states that this unique solution is always crossing-free, and more strongly that every face of the resulting planar embedding is convex. It is called the spring theorem because such an embedding can be found as the equilibrium position for a system of springs representing the edges of the graph.

This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Air-liquid interface cell culture</span>

Air liquid interface cell culture (ALI) is a method of cell culture by which basal stem cells are grown with their basal surfaces in contact with media, and the top of the cellular layer is exposed to the air. The cells are then lifted and media is changed until the development of a mucociliary phenotype of a pseudostratified epithelium, similar to the tracheal epithelium.

For the statement about feminism of the same name, see Helen Lewis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clara Grima</span>

Clara Isabel Grima Ruiz is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Seville, specializing in computational geometry. She is known for her research on scutoids and for her popularization of mathematics.

Barry James Thompson is an Australian and British developmental biologist and cancer biologist. Thompson is known for identifying genes, proteins and mechanisms involved in epithelial polarity, morphogenesis and cell signaling via the Wnt and Hippo signaling pathways, which have key roles in human cancer.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gómez-Gálvez, Pedro; Vicente-Munuera, Pablo; Tagua, Antonio; Forja, Cristina; Castro, Ana M.; Letrán, Marta; Valencia-Expósito, Andrea; Grima, Clara; Bermúdez-Gallardo, Marina (27 July 2018). "Scutoids are a geometrical solution to three-dimensional packing of epithelia". Nature Communications. 9 (1): 2960. Bibcode:2018NatCo...9.2960G. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05376-1. ISSN   2041-1723. PMC   6063940 . PMID   30054479.
  2. 1 2 Burdick, Alan (30 July 2018). "We Are All Scutoids: A Brand-New Shape, Explained". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 standupmaths (3 August 2018). "THE SCUTOID: did scientists discover a new shape?" . Retrieved 3 August 2018 via YouTube.
  4. Supplementary Movie from Gómez-Gálvez et al. 2018 , Electronic supplementary material
  5. Boddy, Jessica. "The 'Scutoid' Is Geometry's Newest Shape, and It Could Be All Over Your Body". Gizmodo. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  6. "Scientists have discovered a brand-new three-dimensional shape". Newsweek. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  7. Taalman, Laura [@mathgrrl] (29 July 2018). "Have you read the @Nature article introducing the new mathematical shape called the SCUTOID? This cutting-edge science is now 3D printable: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3024272" (Tweet). Retrieved 3 August 2018 via Twitter.
  8. Taalman, Laura. "Pair of Packable Scutoids by mathgrrl on Shapeways". Shapeways.com. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  9. Gómez, Harold F.; Dumond, Mathilde; Hodel, Leonie; Vetter, Roman; Iber, Dagmar (5 October 2021). "3D cell neighbour dynamics in growing pseudostratified epithelia". eLife. 10: e68135. doi: 10.7554/eLife.68135 . PMC   8570695 . PMID   34609280.
  10. Iber, Dagmar; Vetter, Roman (12 May 2022). "3D Organisation of Cells in Pseudostratified Epithelia". Frontiers in Physics. 10: 898160. Bibcode:2022FrP....10.8160I. doi: 10.3389/fphy.2022.898160 . hdl: 20.500.11850/547113 .