Collecting Model Ducts

At the frontline of cleaning your blood are structures in your kidneys called nephrons. Researchers have modelled how they work using organoids — tissues grown in a dish that mimic features of the real organ. But an organoid to mimic and investigate the kidney’s collecting ducts (CDs) — a network of tubes responsible for the production of urine – has been elusive until now. Researchers have created such a model using progenitor cells from structures in mouse developing kidneys called ureteric buds (UBs). Adding a mix of chemicals encouraged UB organoids to become CD organoids, as captured using fluorescence microscopy (pictured), taking on a structure similar to the adult CD system. Moreover, adding nephron progenitor cells to UB organoids mimicked kidney development, including the branching of CDs and early nephron formation. These models can therefore help us better understand collecting ducts in health, disease and development.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Zipeng Zeng and Biao Huang, and colleagues
• USC/UKRO Kidney Research Center, Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, June 2021