Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals

Understand

Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic and bacterial active matter.

• Whether collective crystallization phenomena can occur in groups of autonomously developing multicellular organisms is currently unknown.
• Here, we show that swimming starfish embryos spontaneously assemble into chiral crystals that span thousands of spinning organisms and persist for tens of hours.
• Combining experiments, theory, and simulations, we demonstrate that the formation, dynamics, and dissolution of these living crystals are controlled by the hydrodynamic properties and natural development of embryos.