他们邀请计算科学家 Daniel Santos-Oliván 建立跳动心脏模型。模型显示应变集中在外侧曲率，反复拉伸与收缩使 jelly 支架逐渐变薄并减弱，最终发生断裂。该区域的细胞从心壁剥离并迁入裂缝，进而诱导小梁形成；Priya 由此指出该过程更受几何形态控制，而不仅是基因控制。后续实验支持该模型：加快斑马鱼心率提高裂纹发生率，减慢心率则降低开裂；将心脏发育为更直且管状会改变裂纹方向，这一特征与材料断裂力学一致，说明其来源是结构性物理过程。
后续在鸡胚中也观察到相似裂纹，Priya 推测人类心脏也可能受类似力学构形过程塑造，但仍属推断。该斑马鱼研究（doi:10.1101/2025.03.07.641942）处于 peer review 阶段，主张关键心脏结构在遗传程序之前也受机械力主导。作者在综述（doi:10.1242/dev.205136）中指出，构建性断裂未必常见，但在动物界范围广泛——包括斑马鱼鼻孔、hydra 口部、果蝇腿和扁形虫；它可能与 crumpling、buckling、wrinkling、folding 一并构成形态发生的物理机制之一，可由组织力学参数的微小变化生成巨大形态差异，并使 Milinkovitch（文中提及）认为这让进化机制更易理解。
Researchers long assumed gene-expression differences in the heart’s outer curvature governed trabeculae network formation, but when Priya and her student Christopher Chan tested this, the implicated enzymes were not found at the expected time and location, so the team shifted toward a physical mechanism. Using high-speed imaging of developing zebrafish hearts at up to 100 frames per second, they found clear gaps in the outer-curvature cardiac jelly about six hours after beating began. These gaps spread like fractures, and about one day later trabecular strands crossed the clefts, indicating a temporal causal link between cracking and trabeculation.
They enlisted computational scientist Daniel Santos-Oliván to build a beating-heart model. The model showed strain concentrating in the outer curvature, with repeated stretching and contraction progressively thinning and weakening the jelly scaffold until it ruptured. Cells at that site peeled from the heart wall and migrated into cracks, then seeded trabeculae; Priya said this showed a process controlled by geometry rather than genetics alone. Follow-up experiments supported this: speeding zebrafish heart rates increased fracture incidence, while slowing them reduced cracking; forcing hearts to grow straight and tubular altered fracture direction, a characteristic behavior of fracture mechanics, indicating a structural physical process.
Subsequent work found similar fractures in chicken embryos, and Priya speculated that human hearts may be shaped by comparable mechanical patterning, though this remains tentative. The zebrafish study (doi:10.1101/2025.03.07.641942), currently in peer review, argues that a key cardiac architecture is influenced by mechanical forces before genetics alone can fully explain it. The authors and their review (doi:10.1242/dev.205136) note that constructive fracturing is not necessarily common but is widespread across animals—from zebrafish nostrils and hydra mouths to fruit fly legs and flatworms—and likely one of several physical morphogenetic modes, alongside crumpling, buckling, wrinkling, and folding, by which small changes in tissue mechanics and architecture can generate broad morphological diversity, making evolution easier to explain, as Milinkovitch put it.