Gut Going

You don’t have to be a parent to know that babies poop, and they poop a lot. But this isn’t true for the one in every 5,000 babies are affected by an inherited condition known as Hirschsprung’s disease, sometimes caused by a faulty version of a gene called Sox10. It affects the development of nerves that trigger the muscles of the gut to push poop along its journey from mouth to nappy, leading to constipation and inflammation. Scientists have turned to zebrafish as a handy laboratory model for studying the condition in more detail. Both of these fish were first fed food labelled with a harmless green fluorescent dye, then given a red-stained meal. By the next morning, a healthy fish (top) has got rid of its green meal and is working through the red one. But a fish with faulty Sox10 (bottom) is still stuck on the green one.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Annah S. Rolig and colleagues
• Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Research published in PLOS Biology, Februrary 2016