«This finding makes a deep connection between the physics of inert granular matter such as sand and the geometry of
multicellular living systems,» said lead author Lior Atia, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology at Harvard Chan School.
The approach combined experimental synthetic biology led by Mark Isalan, now Reader in Gene Network Engineering at the Department of
Life Sciences of Imperial College London with computational modelling led by James Sharpe, ICREA Research Professor and head of the
Multicellular Systems Biology lab at the CRG.