Keratins coordinate tissue spreading by balancing spreading forces with tissue material properties
Carl-Philipp Heisenberg
Nature Communications, Published online: 16 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-72366-z The contrasting roles of epithelial tissues in providing flexibility while maintaining integrity are not yet well understood. Here, the authors show that this need can be fulfilled by keratin intermediate filaments cross talking to other cytoskeletal machinery across the developing epithelium.