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Lab Notes

We Are All Scutoids: A Brand-New Shape, Explained

By Alan Burdick

July 30, 2018

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A figure of two scutoids.
A Play-Doh figure of two scutoids. Researchers first observed the
previously unnamed shape in a computer model. They then went to
nature and found it in abundance.Photograph by Luisma Escudero /
Universidad de Sevilla

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Until last week, the world of science was unaware of the scutoid. The
scutoid is a basic three-dimensional shape, like a cube or a sphere
but not like either of those things. It's more like a column with
half of one end lopped off at an angle; popular accounts have
described it as a twisted prism, although that's not so helpful.
"It's a prism with a zipper," Javier Buceta, a biophysicist at Lehigh
University and one of the scutoid's discoverers, told me excitedly.
This was also not so helpful.

What matters is that mathematicians had never before conceived of the
scutoid, much less given it a name. What matters even more is that
scutoids turn out to be everywhere, especially in living things. The
shape, however odd, is a building block of multicellular organisms;
complex life might never have emerged on Earth without it. Its
existence, Buceta said, "allows you to understand the fundamentals of
morphogenesis and development--how cells act together when they're
forming and developing."

Alan Burdick is the author, most recently, of "Why Time Flies: A
Mostly Scientific Investigation."
More:MicrobiologyGeometryScience

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