Published in Physics World, 11 Jul 2012
Researchers in Spain and the US have discovered that ultraslow waves occur during the expansion of living tissue. These waves could explain how cells migrate to the right places for an organism to grow, repair itself or develop tumours.
Growth, repair and the development of tumours are all processes that involve the expansion of a monolayer of cells, or “epithelial expansion”. If you have a small wound, for example, the wound will form a scab and, beneath that, a matrix for the construction of new tissue. But in the final stage, a monolayer of cells will migrate from undamaged tissue to form a new outer-boundary layer. […]
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