Cell cytoplasm and neutron stars feature the same parking garage-like structures within them, researchers have found.
Back in 2014, Greg Huber, a soft condensed-matter physicist from the University of California Santa Barbara and colleagues discovered that the endoplasmic reticulum, a cellular organelle, formed evenly spaced sheet stacks connected by helices. They called the structure Terasaki ramps in reference to University of Connecticut cell biologist Mark Terasaki, who discovered it first.
However, at the time, the researchers thought that Terasaki ramps were specific to soft matter. That was until Huber chanced upon research by Charles Horowitz, a nuclear physicist from Indiana University. With the help of computer simulations, Horowitz and his colleagues found the same evenly spaced sheet stacks connected by helices present in neutron star crusts.
Similarities Between Human Cells And Neutron Stars
Huber shared how he gave Horowitz a call to ask if he was aware that the structures they observed were also present in human cells.
"It was news to him, so I realized then that there could be some fruitful interaction," he said.
When the two research teams got together, the result was a collaboration in exploring the relationship between the two different models of matter. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review C.
For nuclear physicists, the shapes they observe when carrying out computer simulations for neutron stars are called nuclear pasta, which include parallel sheets and tubes (lasagna and spaghetti, respectively) bound by helical shapes that look a lot like Terasaki ramps.
But while human cells and neutron stars have similar interior structures, they differ when it comes to underlying physics.
Inside cells, forces holding together membranes are entropic fundamentally and are associated with the minimization of overall free energy within the system. Neutron stars, on the other, feature strong electromagnetic and nuclear force.
According to Horowitz, observing highly similar shapes with striking differences in their systems points to the possibility that a system's energy depends on the shape it takes.
Human Cells And Neutron Stars: Future Research Possibility
It's clearly interesting, if you ask nuclear physicist Martin Savage. He was at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics when he saw the graphics for the structures and his interest was piqued immediately. He was surprised that phases of matter that are similar in nature could spring from biological systems.
While it has identified similarities between human cells and neutron stars, the study, added Horowitz, is not the end. Rather, it marks the beginning of further research into the two highly different models with very similar interior structures. There are still some areas the researchers don't understand, after all.
