A new study led by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, published in Nature Physics, reports that living matter does not follow previously established symmetry principles when cellular flows organize and dissolve collective patterns.
The work, which examined swarming bacteria and tissue cells, suggests that classic physical models of motion are insufficient to describe living systems. The observed behavior contradicts expectations derived from those models.
According to the researchers, these results challenge the universality of physical laws as applied to biological matter, pointing to new rules that may govern collective cellular behavior.