Click here to close Hello! We notice that you are using Internet Explorer, which is not supported by Echinobase and may cause the site to display incorrectly. We suggest using a current version of Chrome, FireFox, or Safari.
Echinobase
ECB-ART-51025
Nature 2022 Jul 01;6077918:287-293. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04889-6.
Show Gene links Show Anatomy links

Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals.

Tan TH , Mietke A , Li J , Chen Y , Higinbotham H , Foster PJ , Gokhale S , Dunkel J , Fakhri N .


Abstract
Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic1,2 and bacterial3,4 active matter. Whether persistent  crystalline order can emerge  in groups of autonomously developing multicellular organisms is currently unknown. Here we show that swimming starfish embryos spontaneously assemble into chiral crystals that span thousands of spinning organisms and persist for tens of hours. Combining experiments, theory and simulations, we demonstrate that the formation, dynamics and dissolution of these living crystals are controlled by the hydrodynamic properties and the natural development of embryos. Remarkably, living chiral crystals exhibit self-sustained chiral oscillations as well as various unconventional deformation response behaviours recently predicted for odd elastic materials5,6. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for how non-reciprocal interactions between autonomous multicellular components may facilitate non-equilibrium phases of chiral active matter.

PubMed ID: 35831595
Article link: Nature