Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs

A fracturing process, shown here in stages, creates the cavity of a blastocyst, inside which an embryonic mouse will grow.

此处分阶段显示的破裂过程会产生囊胚腔，小鼠胚胎将在其中生长。

The fluid inside follows the path of least resistance, preferentially breaking contacts between weaker (red) over tenser (blue) cells.

内部的流体沿着阻力最小的路径流动，优先破坏较弱（红色）而不是较紧张（蓝色）细胞之间的接触。

T here’s a moment, just before the tight mass of cells that is a developing mouse embryo implants itself in the womb, that it all comes apart.

就在正在发育的小鼠胚胎将其自身植入子宫之前，有一个时刻，这一切都分崩离析。

Hundreds of tiny fluid-filled bubbles expand between each of the orb’s few dozen cells.

数百个充满液体的微小气泡在球体的几十个细胞之间膨胀。

The bubbles grow and press outward on cell membranes — and then, in a moment of fracture, pry them apart.

气泡长大并向外挤压细胞膜，然后在破裂的瞬间将它们撬开。

Thin protein strands tether the cells together as the dissociated embryo floats.

当分离的胚胎漂浮时，细细的蛋白质链将细胞束缚在一起。

Over the course of a few hours, the smaller bubbles empty into larger ones, until the fluid coalesces into a single cavity.

在几个小时的过程中，较小的气泡变成较大的气泡，直到流体合并成一个空腔。

With this defining feature, the zygote becomes a blastocyst, ready to embed itself in the lining of the uterus.

凭借这一决定性特征，受精卵成为囊胚，准备将其自身嵌入子宫内膜中。

And inside this hollow ball of cells, reshaped by fracture, a fetus will grow.

在这个因断裂而重塑的空心细胞球内，胎儿将会生长。

“It’s fracturing, but not in a way like you might imagine,” said Hervé Turlier , a physicist at the Collège de France in Paris and a member of the team that characterized this process in mouse embryos.

巴黎法兰西学院的物理学家、研究小鼠胚胎这一过程的团队成员埃尔韦·图利尔 (Hervé Turlier) 表示：“它正在破裂，但方式并不像你想象的那样。”

Typically, fractures are fault lines that propagate haphazardly under stress and spread through inert materials, such as ice, rock, or concrete.

通常，裂缝是在应力下随意传播并通过惰性材料（例如冰、岩石或混凝土）传播的断层线。

But the fractures that Turlier’s colleagues observed in mouse embryos display different characteristics.

但图利尔的同事在小鼠胚胎中观察到的骨折表现出不同的特征。

They emerged via a tightly controlled mechanical process, governed by differences in physical tension and cells’ bonds to one another.

它们是通过严格控制的机械过程产生的，受物理张力和细胞彼此之间的结合的差异控制。

The fractures were also only temporary: Within hours of splitting, the cells sealed back together again.

断裂也只是暂时的：分裂后数小时内，细胞又重新密封在一起。

And these fractures were constructive, sculpting new shapes from developing tissues, in an evolutionary approach that scientists are uncovering across the animal kingdom.

这些骨折是建设性的，通过科学家在整个动物王国中发现的进化方法，从发育中的组织中塑造出新的形状。

Shaping tissues requires forces — that much has been obvious to the physicists who have peered down microscopes for almost as long as biologists have.

塑造组织需要力量——对于那些几乎和生物学家一样长时间观察显微镜的物理学家来说，这一点是显而易见的。

From life’s first moments, multiplying cells are squished, stretched, and tugged to form tissues that bend and twist into organs that expand and contract.

从生命诞生的最初一刻起，增殖的细胞就被挤压、拉伸和拉扯，形成组织，这些组织弯曲和扭曲，形成扩张和收缩的器官。

“All that is obviously involving a lot of mechanics,” said Michel Milinkovitch , a theoretical biologist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland who has observed mechanical fracturing during the formation of African elephant skin.

“所有这一切显然都涉及大量的力学，”瑞士日内瓦大学的理论生物学家米歇尔·米林科维奇（Michel Milinkovitch）说，他观察了非洲象皮形成过程中的机械断裂。

The biophysicists Hervé Turlier (top) and Jean-Léon Maître (bottom) teamed up to investigate whether a mechanical fracture could be a key step in constructing an embryo.

生物物理学家 Hervé Turlier（上）和 Jean-Léon Maître（下）联手研究机械骨折是否可能是构建胚胎的关键步骤。

Patrick Imbert, Collège de France; Mathieu Baumer

帕特里克·安伯特，法兰西学院；马蒂厄·鲍默

When physicists approach biology, their first instinct is usually to take a theory about mechanics “and just apply it” to a biological system, said Marino Arroyo , a theoretical physicist at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain.

西班牙加泰罗尼亚理工大学的理论物理学家马里诺·阿罗约表示，当物理学家研究生物学时，他们的第一本能通常是采用力学理论“并将其应用到”生物系统中。

But living cells and tissues are far stranger and more dynamic than the lifeless materials physicists typically study.

但活细胞和组织比物理学家通常研究的无生命材料要陌生得多，也更具活力。

They are filled with fluid, continually rebuild themselves, and actively respond to a complex mix of chemical signals and mechanical forces.

它们充满液体，不断自我重建，并积极响应化学信号和机械力的复杂组合。

“You have to really adapt these theories,” Arroyo said, “because living tissues are very different in many ways.”

“你必须真正适应这些理论，”阿罗约说，“因为活体组织在很多方面都非常不同。”

Over the past decades, thanks to new precision instruments and advanced techniques that can image cells at high resolution, measure forces, and manipulate tissues, there has been a resurgence in mechanobiology , the study of physical forces in cells and tissues.

在过去的几十年里，由于能够以高分辨率对细胞进行成像、测量力和操纵组织的新型精密仪器和先进技术，机械生物学（细胞和组织中的物理力的研究）重新兴起。

However, the discovery of how some growing tissues deliberately fracture themselves to make new functional shapes has been a recent surprise.

然而，最近发现一些正在生长的组织如何故意断裂自己以形成新的功能形状，这令人惊讶。

Using custom-built tools and computer models that incorporate decades-old theories from materials science, teams of biologists and physicists are deciphering the mechanisms at play and demonstrating that forces that seem destructive are essential to how some organs form.

生物学家和物理学家团队使用融合了材料科学数十年理论的定制工具和计算机模型，正在破译其中的机制，并证明看似具有破坏性的力量对于某些器官的形成至关重要。

A review paper , published in Development in February, compiles examples of constructive fractures in developing tissues of organisms across the tree of life.

二月份发表在《发展》杂志上的一篇评论论文，汇编了生命树上发育中的生物体组织中的建设性断裂的例子。

Although the underlying mechanisms may differ from tissue to tissue, and from organism to organism, the apparent ubiquity of these processes suggests that fracturing is a useful, if counterintuitive, way to sculpt tissues and their vital features.

尽管潜在的机制可能因组织和生物体的不同而不同，但这些过程的明显普遍性表明，断裂是塑造组织及其生命特征的一种有用的方法，尽管这种方法违反直觉。

It’s also revealing new machinations of evolution.

它还揭示了进化的新机制。

“In biology, breaking isn’t always a failure,” said review co-author Rashmi Priya , a developmental biologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London who has watched cracks form in developing zebra fish hearts.

“在生物学中，破裂并不总是失败，”伦敦弗朗西斯·克里克研究所的发育生物学家、该评论的合著者拉什米·普里亚（Rashmi Priya）说，他观察过斑马鱼心脏发育过程中裂缝的形成。

“It’s often a necessary step in building something new.”

“这通常是构建新事物的必要步骤。”

Years before Turlier and his collaborators discovered how fluid cracks apart a days-old mouse embryo, researchers had a hunch that forces from the flow of pressurized fluids, also known as hydraulics, might be one way living tissues reshape themselves.

在图利尔和他的合作者发现流体如何分裂几天大的小鼠胚胎之前几年，研究人员就有一种预感，加压流体流动的力量（也称为液压）可能是活体组织重塑自身的一种方式。

In 2015, to model fractures in epithelial tissues, scientists in Barcelona grew a single layer of cells on top of a fluid-filled gel.

2015 年，为了模拟上皮组织的骨折，巴塞罗那的科学家在充满液体的凝胶顶部生长了单层细胞。

To their surprise, when they stretched the cell layer by pulling on the gel, it didn’t break apart; that happened only when they released the tension and let the gel relax.

令他们惊讶的是，当他们通过拉扯凝胶来拉伸细胞层时，它并没有破裂；而是没有破裂。只有当他们释放张力并让凝胶松弛时才会发生这种情况。

The team, led by Arroyo and the physicist Xavier Trepat at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, realized that the fluid-filled hydrogel behaved like a squeezed sponge: As it contracted, it expelled its water, which pushed between the cells with so much force that the cell layer ruptured.

由阿罗约和加泰罗尼亚生物工程研究所物理学家 Xavier Trepat 领导的研究小组意识到，充满液体的水凝胶的行为就像一块被挤压的海绵：当它收缩时，它会排出水分，从而以如此大的力量在细胞之间推动，导致细胞层破裂。

Tiny bubbles pry cells apart as a mouse blastocyst forms, in a process akin to hydraulic fracturing.

当小鼠囊胚形成时，微小的气泡将细胞撬开，这一过程类似于水力压裂。

This mechanical process reshapes the sphere of cells into a hollow blastocyst, inside which a fetus will grow.

这一机械过程将细胞球重塑为空心囊胚，胎儿将在其中生长。

Since cells of living tissues are brimming with water, just like hydrogels, the physicists “speculated that this hydraulic fracture could play a role in biology,” Arroyo recalled.

阿罗约回忆道，由于活体组织的细胞充满了水，就像水凝胶一样，物理学家“推测这种水力裂缝可能在生物学中发挥作用”。

But they didn’t pursue the idea further.

但他们没有进一步追求这个想法。

In 2019, Turlier and his collaborator Jean-Léon Maître , a cell and developmental biophysicist at the Curie Institute in Paris, observed a similar fracturing process in living tissue — mouse zygotes growing in a dish.

2019 年，Turlier 和他的合作者 Jean-Léon Maître（巴黎居里研究所的细胞和发育生物物理学家）在活体组织（培养皿中生长的小鼠受精卵）中观察到了类似的破裂过程。

The researchers imaged them once a minute, much faster than scientists ever had before, starting at the stage just before the zygotes would normally adhere to the womb wall.

研究人员从受精卵通常粘附在子宫壁之前的阶段开始，每分钟对它们进行一次成像，比科学家以前的速度要快得多。

As Turlier watched, the fluid-filled bubbles ballooned between cells and then shrunk.

图利尔观察到，充满液体的气泡在细胞之间膨胀，然后收缩。

He immediately saw similarities to a process known as Ostwald ripening, in which many small particles, bubbles, or droplets join into fewer larger ones.

他立即发现了与奥斯特瓦尔德成熟过程的相似之处，在奥斯特瓦尔德成熟过程中，许多小颗粒、气泡或液滴结合成较少的较大颗粒、气泡或液滴。

This spontaneous process is the main reason why bubble baths lose their foam over time: Driven by pressure differences, air diffuses from smaller bubbles into larger ones.

这种自发过程是泡泡浴随着时间的推移失去泡沫的主要原因：在压力差的驱动下，空气从较小的气泡扩散到较大的气泡中。

Similarly, in the mouse embryo, small bubbles between cells give way to large bubbles as the fluid they contain flows along pressure gradients, until only one large cavity, the blastocoel, remains.

类似地，在小鼠胚胎中，细胞间的小气泡让位于大气泡，因为它们所含的液体沿着压力梯度流动，直到只剩下一个大空腔，即囊胚腔。

“This is something I’ve seen over and over in soft matter physics,” Turlier said.

“这是我在软物质物理学中一遍又一遍地看到的东西，”图利尔说。

“It took me two minutes to realize the analogy.” It took Maître’s team another year to show experimentally how the process reshapes the ball of cells that is a mouse zygote into a hollow sphere, the blastocyst.

“我花了两分钟才意识到这个类比。”梅特的团队又花了一年的时间才通过实验展示了这一过程如何将小鼠受精卵的细胞球重塑为空心球体，即囊胚。

The duo knew from their previous studies that certain cells in the mouse embryo were tenser and sturdier than others due to differences in their internal scaffolds, which underpin the cell membrane and keep it taut.

两人从之前的研究中得知，小鼠胚胎中的某些细胞比其他细胞更紧张、更坚固，因为它们的内部支架不同，这些支架支撑着细胞膜并使其保持绷紧。

Taking new measurements, the researchers saw that as fluid gushed between cells, creating indentations in their cell membranes, bubbles mostly bulged into weaker cells.

通过新的测量，研究人员发现，当液体在细胞之间涌出时，在细胞膜上产生凹痕，气泡大多膨胀到较弱的细胞中。

To test whether those differences affected the formation of the blastocoel, Maître’s lab mixed tenser cells with weaker ones to form chimera mouse zygotes.

为了测试这些差异是否影响囊胚腔的形成，梅特的实验室将较紧张的细胞与较弱的细胞混合以形成嵌合体小鼠受精卵。

Then they watched the zygotes become blastocysts.

然后他们观察受精卵变成囊胚。

This is a crucial stage of embryonic development, as the final, off-center position of the blastocoel sets the axis of symmetry for the mouse’s back and belly.

这是胚胎发育的关键阶段，因为囊胚腔最终的偏离中心的位置决定了小鼠背部和腹部的对称轴。

No matter what, the cavity always formed adjacent to the weaker cells; in other words, the water flowed along the path of least resistance.

无论如何，空洞总是在较弱的细胞附近形成；换句话说，水沿着阻力最小的路径流动。

“The fluid goes …

“液体流...

where [cells] deform faster,” Turlier said.

[细胞]变形得更快，”图利尔说。

Their simulations produced the same result.

他们的模拟产生了相同的结果。

In biology, breaking isn’t always a failure.

在生物学中，突破并不总是失败。

It’s often a necessary step in building something new.

这通常是构建新事物的必要步骤。

Rashmi Priya, Francis Crick Institute

拉什米·普里亚 (Rashmi Priya)，弗朗西斯·克里克研究所

Genes might program the initial differences in cells’ tension, but then physics quickly takes over.

基因可能会编程细胞张力的最初差异，但随后物理学很快就会接管。

The mechanics unfold “too fast for the genome to play a role,” Maître said.

梅特说，这一机制的展开“太快，基因组无法发挥作用”。

As fluid bubbles up between cells, it compresses any weaker cells in the zygote and fractures their connections with neighboring cells.

当液体在细胞之间冒泡时，它会压缩受精卵中任何较弱的细胞，并破坏它们与邻近细胞的连接。

Governed by physical forces, the growing embryo seems to have “no other choice” than to put its blastocoel to one side, Turlier said.

图利尔说，在物理力量的控制下，生长中的胚胎似乎“别无选择”，只能将囊胚腔放在一侧。

“It’s extremely robust.”

“它非常坚固。”

Breaking so many contacts between cells may seem ruinous for a zygote floating in the womb.

对于漂浮在子宫中的受精卵来说，打破细胞之间如此多的接触似乎是毁灭性的。

But because many small cracks appear between every cell, a single, catastrophic fracture doesn’t rip the embryo open, Arroyo said.

但阿罗约说，由于每个细胞之间都会出现许多小裂缝，因此一次灾难性的骨折不会将胚胎撕裂。

The mechanism revealed in days-old mouse embryos “showed that mammals like us are built at [this] moment by fracturing cell-cell junctions,” he said.

他说，几天大的小鼠胚胎中揭示的机制“表明像我们这样的哺乳动物是在此时通过破坏细胞与细胞的连接而形成的”。

Turlier and Maître’s studies of mouse embryos established the idea that cracks can shape organisms.

图利尔和迈特对小鼠胚胎的研究确立了裂缝可以塑造生物体的观点。

A few years later, close observation of the developing heart would “greatly expand the idea of fracture as a morphogenetic mechanism,” Arroyo said — one that can build pliable and durable tissues and organs.

阿罗约说，几年后，对发育中的心脏的密切观察将“极大地扩展骨折作为一种形态发生机制的概念”——一种可以构建柔韧且耐用的组织和器官的机制。

T he theoretical biologist Michel Milinkovitch (above) is intrigued by patterns in nature.

理论生物学家米歇尔·米林科维奇（上图）对自然界的模式很感兴趣。

The crevices in African elephant skin, for example, bear a striking resemblance to cracks in drying mud, and he suspected that they formed in a similar way — through “simple tensile fracturing,” which cracks mud as it dehydrates and shrinks, he said.

例如，非洲象皮肤上的裂缝与干燥泥浆中的裂缝非常相似，他怀疑它们是以类似的方式形成的——通过“简单的拉伸断裂”，泥浆在脱水和收缩时会破裂，他说。

But initial simulations didn’t reproduce the cracking pattern.

但最初的模拟并未重现裂纹模式。

His team was missing something.

他的团队遗漏了一些东西。

The outermost layer of African elephant skin, the epidermis, was known to be stiff, dry, and thick because elephants don’t shed dead skin cells.

非洲象皮肤的最外层（表皮）坚硬、干燥且厚，因为大象不会脱落死皮细胞。

Dissections by Milinkovitch’s team revealed something new: microscopic bumps, spaced barely a millimeter apart, in the dermal skin layer beneath the epidermis.

米林科维奇团队的解剖揭示了一些新的东西：表皮下的真皮层中存在微小的凸起，间距仅为一毫米。

When the team added this feature to their simulations, the model “mimicked perfectly” the cracks seen in African elephant skin, Milinkovitch said.

米林科维奇说，当团队将此功能添加到模拟中时，该模型“完美地模仿”了非洲象皮肤上的裂纹。

It also clarified how they form.

它还阐明了它们是如何形成的。

As the epidermis thickens with accumulating dead skin cells, it bends around the dermal bumps until it breaks.

当表皮因死皮细胞的积累而变厚时，它会在真皮肿块周围弯曲直至破裂。

This creates an intricate network of microscopic cracks that, in addition to visible furrows, help retain the water elephants douse themselves in to stay cool.

这就形成了一个复杂的微观裂缝网络，除了可见的皱纹之外，还有助于水象浸泡在水中以保持凉爽。

– C.W.

– C.W.

Living tissues can withstand immense forces, but no organ is quite as lively or forceful as the heart.

活组织可以承受巨大的力量，但没有任何器官像心脏一样活跃或有力。

It’s the first organ to form in vertebrate development, and it gets straight to work: beating before it’s fully formed, while it’s still a straight, deflated tube.

它是脊椎动物发育过程中第一个形成的器官，并且可以直接发挥作用：在完全形成之前就开始跳动，同时它仍然是一个直的、泄气的管子。

The zebra fish heart beats about 150 times per minute — or 2.5 times per second — and expands to nearly twice its size and then contracts with each rhythmic pulse.

斑马鱼的心脏每分钟跳动约 150 次，即每秒 2.5 次，并且会扩张到其大小的近两倍，然后随着每次有节奏的脉冲而收缩。

“Just imagine from the viewpoint of an engineer trying to generate a structure that is undergoing such mechanical deformations.

“从工程师的角度想象一下，试图生成一个正在经历这种机械变形的结构。

I mean, it’s crazy,” said Alejandro Torres-Sánchez , a theoretical computational physicist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Barcelona.

我的意思是，这太疯狂了。”巴塞罗那欧洲分子生物学实验室的理论计算物理学家亚历杭德罗·托雷斯·桑切斯 (Alejandro Torres-Sánchez) 说道。

Its force depends on trabeculae, muscular strands that line the heart’s inner walls to help it pump.

它的力量取决于小梁，即排列在心脏内壁上以帮助心脏泵血的肌肉束。

Without this active mesh, the heart would not beat, and blood would not flow.

如果没有这种活跃的网格，心脏就不会跳动，血液也不会流动。

During her postdoc, Priya, the Crick Institute biologist, discovered that trabeculae are created by mechanical forces that expel cells from the heart wall.

克里克研究所生物学家 Priya 在博士后期间发现，小梁是由将细胞从心壁排出的机械力产生的。

But she wasn’t satisfied with existing explanations for why trabeculae originate in the outer curvature, a bulge that forms as the tubular heart twists into shape.

但她对为什么小梁起源于外曲率的现有解释并不满意，外曲率是管状心脏扭曲成形时形成的凸起。

A beating zebra fish heart generates mechanical forces.

跳动的斑马鱼心脏会产生机械力。

The outer curvature endures great strain: Located directly opposite the valve through which blood enters the heart, it gets hit with incoming blood.

外曲率承受巨大的压力：位于血液进入心脏的瓣膜正对面，它会受到流入的血液的冲击。

Researchers presumed that certain genes were more active in this part of the heart, and that this activity explained the formation of the muscular network of trabeculae.

研究人员推测，某些基因在心脏的这一部分更加活跃，这种活动解释了小梁肌肉网络的形成。

But when Priya and her student Christopher Chan looked, “none of the enzymes were there in the right time [or the] right place,” Priya said.

但当 Priya 和她的学生 Christopher Chan 观察时，“没有一种酶出现在正确的时间[或]正确的位置，”Priya 说。

Their absence left the researchers with one alternative to genetic instructions: physics.

它们的缺席让研究人员有了遗传指令的另一种选择：物理学。

Priya and Chan imaged zebra fish hearts as they formed, capturing up to 100 frames per second at various intervals to closely follow any changes in their shape.

Priya 和 Chan 在斑马鱼心脏形成时对其进行成像，以不同的时间间隔每秒捕捉高达 100 帧的图像，以密切跟踪斑马鱼形状的任何变化。

Just six hours after the heart started beating, they noticed prominent gaps in the outer curvature’s cardiac jelly, a solid network of proteins that props up heart tissue.

心脏开始跳动后仅六个小时，他们注意到外曲率心脏胶中存在明显的间隙，心脏胶是支撑心脏组织的固体蛋白质网络。

These gaps spread like fractures, and one day after they appeared, trabeculae strands started to knit their way across them.

这些缝隙像骨折一样蔓延，在它们出现一天后，小梁线开始在其中编织。

That timing suggested that these gaps might have something to do with how trabeculae form.

这个时间表明这些间隙可能与小梁的形成方式有关。

They asked the computational scientist Daniel Santos-Oliván on Torres-Sánchez’s team to develop simulations of beating hearts, which revealed that the gaps in the cardiac jelly were indeed fractures.

他们要求托雷斯-桑切斯团队的计算科学家丹尼尔·桑托斯-奥利万开发心脏跳动的模拟，结果表明心脏果冻中的间隙确实是骨折。

The model showed that as the heart pulses and takes shape, strain concentrates in the outer curvature, stretching and contracting the jelly scaffold so much that it thins, weakens, and eventually breaks.

该模型表明，当心脏搏动并成形时，应变集中在外曲率，从而使果冻支架过度拉伸和收缩，使其变薄、变弱并最终破裂。

Sensing those fractures, heart muscle cells at the outer curvature then peel away from the heart wall and fall into the jelly’s newly formed cracks, where they seed the trabeculae.

感知到这些裂缝后，外曲率处的心肌细胞就会从心壁剥离并落入果冻新形成的裂缝中，在那里它们会播种小梁。

Without the simulations, “we could never have thought that [this process] is controlled by geometry,” Priya said.

如果没有模拟，“我们永远不会想到[这个过程]是由几何形状控制的，”普里亚说。

Studies by Christopher Chan (left) and Rashmi Priya (right) showed how controlled fracture helps to build a heart that can withstand forces.

Christopher Chan（左）和 Rashmi Priya（右）的研究表明，控制性骨折如何有助于建立能够承受外力的心脏。

To test that hypothesis, the researchers sped up the zebra fishes’ heart rate; more fractures formed in the cardiac jelly.

为了验证这一假设，研究人员加快了斑马鱼的心率。心脏胶冻中形成更多骨折。

When they slowed the hearts, fewer cracks appeared.

当他们放慢心脏速度时，出现的裂缝就会减少。

This confirmed that the fracturing was a physical process dependent on the incredible strain of heart contractions.

这证实了骨折是一个物理过程，依赖于令人难以置信的心脏收缩压力。

To test it another way, the team engineered hearts to grow straight and tubular; when they did so, the fractures changed their direction, too.

为了以另一种方式进行测试，研究小组将心脏设计成笔直且呈管状生长。当他们这样做时，裂缝也改变了方向。

That behavior is “characteristic of a fracture,” Torres-Sánchez said, and “made us sure that these were [fractures] we were looking at.”

托雷斯-桑切斯说，这种行为是“骨折的特征”，并且“让我们确信这些就是我们正在观察的[骨折]。”

Priya’s team has since seen these fractures in the hearts of chicken embryos.

此后，普里亚的团队在鸡胚胎的心脏中发现了这些骨折。

Based on these preliminary findings, “it is tempting to speculate that human hearts might be shaped by similar structural processes,” she said.

根据这些初步发现，“很容易推测人类心脏可能是由类似的结构过程塑造的，”她说。

In any case, their zebra fish work , which is undergoing peer review, shows that a fundamental feature of an essential organ is shaped by mechanical forces ahead of genetics.

无论如何，他们正在接受同行评审的斑马鱼研究表明，重要器官的基本特征是由机械力先于遗传学塑造的。

The recent revelation that fracturing can be a constructive tool during development doesn’t mean the phenomenon is particularly common.

最近发现压裂可以成为开发过程中的建设性工具，但这并不意味着这种现象特别普遍。

Still, it is widespread in animals: Ruptures, tears, and cracks are known to shape zebra fish nostrils, hydra mouths, fruit fly legs, and whole flatworms.

尽管如此，这种现象在动物中仍然很普遍：众所周知，破裂、撕裂和裂缝会塑造斑马鱼的鼻孔、水螅的嘴、果蝇的腿和整个扁虫。

And yet because fracturing seems so destructive, almost antithetical to growth, it has only recently been recognized as a way of shaping tissues, summed up in the recent review paper co-authored by Priya, Torres-Sánchez, Santos-Oliván, and Chan.

然而，由于断裂似乎具有如此大的破坏性，几乎与生长相反，它直到最近才被认为是塑造组织的一种方式，Priya、Torres-Sánchez、Santos-Oliván 和 Chan 共同撰写的最近一篇评论论文对此进行了总结。

Maître suspects that more examples of fracturing will be found now that researchers know to look for it.

梅特怀疑，既然研究人员知道要寻找裂缝，就会发现更多裂缝的例子。

In recent years, researchers have discovered that, aside from fracturing, living tissues also crumple, buckle, wrinkle, and fold via physical mechanisms that produce incredible diversity with just a few slight tweaks in tissue properties and architecture.

近年来，研究人员发现，除了断裂之外，活体组织还会通过物理机制发生皱缩、弯曲、起皱和折叠，只需对组织特性和结构进行一些细微的调整，就会产生令人难以置信的多样性。

“This is really far-reaching,” Milinkovitch said.

“这确实影响深远，”米林科维奇说。

Mechanics makes evolution “much easier to understand.”

力学使进化“更容易理解”。

Get highlights of the most important news delivered to your email inbox

获取发送到您的电子邮件收件箱的最重要新闻的摘要

Quanta Magazine moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation.

《Quanta》杂志对评论进行审核，以促进知情、实质性、文明的对话。

Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected.

辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

版主在正常工作时间（纽约时间）有工作人员，并且只能接受英文评论。