Neighbourly Messages

Like you drop a note through a neighbour’s letterbox, cells send messages to nearby companions, with instructions like ‘move’ or ‘die’ (hopefully not quite what you suggest to neighbours). To better understand the fundamentals of these widespread and crucial interactions, researchers investigated how just one of these messages, or ligands, is able to relay many messages in the simple fruit fly. They found multiple components, including a tether preventing the message spreading too far from the sender, like two cups on a string, and one that controls the volume of the message, helping distinguish an urgent shout from a gentle suggestion. These subtleties enable clear communication, and the ligand in question – FGF Pyramus, red in the developing fly embryo sequence pictured, with corresponding receptors in green – is key to healthy heart development in both flies and humans. Deciphering its methods of communication could reveal clues to preventing developmental heart defects.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Vincent Stepanik, Jingjing Sun and Angelike Stathopoulos
• Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
• Image copyright Elsevier 2020. Reproduced with permission.
• Published in Current Biology, August 2020