Try to imagine a new color. Think long and hard. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Relax. Then, realize its impossible. Scientists may not have been able to discover a new color visible to the human eye (yet) but they have discovered a new shape.
Meet the scutoid. Published in the journal “Nature Communications,” this rectangular looking… thing is actually all over your body and you didn’t even know it. Or more like, in your body. It’s the shape that epithelial cells take so that your tissue can fold and curve in your skin and organs. Pretty creepy and cool, right?
The discovery of the scutoid “finally explains how nature packs cells efficiently in a three-dimensional structure.” The cells can be compared to lego blocks in that they connect together to reduce the amount of space taken up within the body. Additionally, they can form together to create barriers, which help fight infection. These cells were previously thought to look like truncated pyramids or prisms.
This new scientific breakthrough has proven that there’s way more out there to be discovered in the world, and some of it is lying right beneath our skin.
