Figure 3.

Within and across vastly different epithelial systems, shape variability collapses to a family of probability density functions (PDFs) that is common to all, and perhaps universal.

a, PDFs of AR in HBECs (Fig. 1d,e) became systematically less skewed and less variable with maturation. b, PDFs of the rescaled parameter $x=(AR-1)/(\overline{AR}-1)$ of HBECs, where $\overline{AR}$ denotes the mean AR for each respective distribution, followed a k-gamma distribution (Eq.1) with k= 1.97. c,d, Similar to a,b respectively for MDCKs with k = 2.31. e,f, Similar to a,b respectively for Drosophila (Fig. 2d) with k = 2.52. g, Predicted distributions for AR given by the model of Bi et al.^25,26 For increasing values of the model’s input parameter P₀, the inset shows the predicted relationship for $\overline{AR}$ vs. SD(AR) (Supplement 6, Fig. S12). h, Collapse of predicted distributions. Black line shows maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) fit with k = 2.53.