Integument review - scales!

Hello Patreon folks!

This month, we are posting another chapter for our Integument Review project - this one focused on scales.

Our Integument Review project aims to understand the skin of various species as a prerequisite for engineering. Things like fur, feathers, and scales are distinctive for different species and important for identity affirmation, and they also have to be robust and self-renewing structures to keep up with daily stress and wear.

The Properties of Scales chapter is focused on listing various kinds of scales, describing what they are made of structurally, and their apparent properties including coloration. Most of the chapter focuses on reptile scales, with some additional description of scales in fish and pangolins. We expect that pangolin scales will be relatively easier to engineer, due to cellular and molecular similarity to fingernails (of all things!), and will be desired by some folks. But, they will not be applicable to all reptilian folks since pangolin scales are very visually distinct. The scales of lizards and snakes versus crocodilians also differ pretty remarkably in terms of tissue layout, even if they have molecular similarities.

We now have good foundations for engineering several different kinds of scales. The immediate next step in this project is finishing up the Properties of Feathers chapter. Once these descriptive/system composition chapters are complete, we will be able to shift to summarizing the details of cell signaling and gene regulation that control how the integument is built, and be in a better position to make more specific and targeted engineering plans.

The chapter itself is on our website at https://freedomofform.org/research/project-integument-review/ and is also attached to this message to save you a click. Enjoy!

Thank you as always for your help and support. We sincerely appreciate it and are excited to keep bringing these concepts closer and closer to reality!