The secret of resistance—shattering into a thousand pieces

Being all in one piece is not always a good strategy for resisting external strain. Biological tissues are well aware of it: they tend to crack simultaneously and gradually in several places, rather than catastrophically in one place only. This makes them particularly resistant. A group of SISSA researchers conducted a theoretical study that explains the mechanism underlying this phenomenon, which was experimentally observed in epithelial cell cultures. By doing so, they take their first steps t