Epithelium stratifies via nucleation and growth induced by foam-geometric instability.

Epithelial stratification proceeds via nucleation-and-growth, where multilayer origins disperse and expand through disordered intermediate states driven by a mechanical instability in foam-like epithelium geometry.

• Why it matters: Stratification is triggered by factors like tension, density, geometry, and defects, but it remains unclear how these cues coordinate across the whole tissue to produce multilayer structure.
• What they did: The authors combined cell culture with three-dimensional vertex modeling to track how multilayer regions emerge and spread, linking the transition to a foam-geometric mechanical instability.
• The result: The nucleation-growth framework also applies to embryonic skin development and intestinal cancer transformation, providing a physical, foam-mechanics-based view of epithelial structural transitions.

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