Chemistry Meets Biology

Chemistry makes your tissues work. Specifically, chemical processes called metabolism. Researchers now investigate how metabolism affects tissue development too. Using mouse embryos, they looked at a developing tissue called mesoderm and the impact of glycolytic flux – a chemical process that breaks down sugars without using oxygen. An enzyme in mouse embryos was genetically engineered to increase glycolytic flux. In these mutants, the mesoderm failed to organise into segments. Analysing the distribution of proteins in mutant mesoderm cells, they found the location of glycolytic enzymes had changed. As high sugar levels are known to increase glycolytic flux, the team next looked at mutant embryos from diabetic mothers. Using fluorescent microscopy, they revealed these mutant embryos (pictured, right) had defects in the formation of early neural tissue called the neural tube and more cell death (yellow) when compared with normal embryos (left). Glycolytic flux, therefore, regulates tissue development in a myriad of ways.

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 Hidenobu Miyazawa and colleagues
• Developmental Biology Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, December 2022