Body Building

These intertwined fibres might look like a close-up of some kind of rustic wicker basket, but this is biological crafting on a microscopic level. Each strand is a muscle lining the body wall of a fruit fly larva, forming the stretchy structure that enables it to keep its shape and wriggle around in search of food. Every muscle fibre needs to be firmly attached at each end in order for it to be the right way round and work properly. Muscle fibres with a targeted change in a gene called Collier (highlighted in red) don’t attach correctly, leading to branched muscles that don’t work properly and larvae that can’t move well. Similar branched muscle fibres are seen in muscle diseases in humans such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, so understanding the role that Collier and similar genes are playing could shed light on new approaches for treating or preventing these conditions.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

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.

Website

• Image from work by Alexandre Carayon and colleagues
• Centre de Biologie du Développement (CBD), Toulouse, France
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, July 2020