Faulty Plumbing

We need perfect plumbing to carry blood, food, air and waste products to the right places in our body. How our tubes remain the right length when we’re changing shape as we grow is a puzzle that we’re just beginning to understand. In a recent study of fruit fly embryos, some were found to have a trachea [windpipe], that had grown too long, causing the kinks and bends we see in this highly magnified, false-coloured picture. Scientists discovered that a faulty gene had disturbed a natural balance between two forces – the growth of the membrane lining the inner surface of the trachea, which tends to stretch it lengthways, and resistance to this stretching action from the extracellular matrix, the springy structure between cells. The gradual adjustment of these balancing forces is believed to be how nature ‘precision engineers’ our tubes so that they grow with our bodies.

Written by Mick Warwicker

Mick Warwicker

Writer

A freelance communications consultant and writer, Mick specialises in science and education. A science graduate and award-winning print and broadcast journalist, he was Head of Communications at Newcastle University from 2000–2011.

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• Image by Shigeo Hayashi, Edouard Hannezo and Bo Dong
• RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, Japan
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 3.0)
• Research published in Cell Reports, May 2014