Sizing-up Organs

How our organs sense the expansion of other tissues and alter their size, coordinating their growth, remains quite a puzzle. To find out more, scientists turn to fruit flies, which unlike mammals grow quickly and are readily modified genetically. A molecule called Dilp8 was known to be key in ensuring that organs grow in relation to body size, and can affect when metamorphosis happens. But how does it know when to act? Looking at different proteins using fluorescent tags in a fruit fly embryo (pictured), the team found that nerve cells bearing a protein called Lgr3 were in certain locations in the central nervous system (arrowed). They discovered that it’s these cells that ‘sense’ Dilp 8 activity, moderating growth and developmental timing by interrupting it as necessary, leading to a normally developed fly. Understanding the molecular signals that coordinate growth in flies is providing vital insight into our own development.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Andres Garelli, Fabiana Heredia, Andreia Casimiro and colleagues
• CEDOC—Chronic Diseases Research Center, NOVA Medical School, Lisbon, Portugal
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, October 2015