The mystery of cartilage is not a typical connective tissue: a biophysics study of bubble-wrap cells in skull and ear

Depending on how you count, your body hosts about 400 types of cells that make up dozens of different types of tissue, from skin to salivary glands. Skeletal tissues, like cartilage, are among the simplest, but this new study proves that they’re no less enigmatic. “It goes to show we still don’t understand it very well,” says Justine Lee, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and researcher with UCLA who was not involved in the study. We are still looking for cool new things. It could result in future implants that are soft and flexible.

Cartilage transplants are a crucial part of many procedures to fix cleft palates, correct missing or misshapen ears and to repair damage to the larynx caused by cancer. They’re also common in elective nose augmentations.

The results aren’t always great. A lot of surgeons use stiff and/or silicone implants, with neither material matching the real thing, in order to transfer cartilage from the rib. In a similar way as the native tissues, implants aren’t flexible the same way. “They often do not integrate, and they move around,” says Maksim Plikus, a cell biologist at UC Irvine. The nose is crooked and needs another revision.

Over the next decade, his team subjected the mysterious cells to a gauntlet of high-tech biological profiles akin to personality tests. They proved that this bouncy connective tissue is neither typical chondrocyte nor adipocyte, according to results published today in Science.

The ear and nose are stretchy thanks to bubble wrap cells that give extra cushion to various body parts, according to a study.

Paul Janmey, a biophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia says that the idea of controlling tissue density by controlling the insides of the cells is new and interesting. In fat tissue, that is not typically the case.