Dis-banded

Just like us, fruit flies are stripy beneath the skin. These sarcomeres – repeating bands of stretchy muscle tissue – contain fibres of myosin (highlighted in green) and actin (purple) griping and pulling at each other – as the sarcomeres shorten, the muscle contracts. This is heart muscle from fruit flies (Drosophila), used to investigate common faults in human heart disease. Compared to healthy muscle at the top, the sarcomeres at the bottom are much looser and swollen – in these hearts, researchers used RNA interference to hamper the activity of a protein called filamin, often shown to be altered in heart diseases like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Yet altering its activity in a different way – using CRISPR gene editing to change its structure – did not affect the flies as expected. Further studies might aim to solve this mystery, while altering genes and proteins reveals more about what we do, or perhaps don’t, have in common with Drosophila.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Flavie Ader and colleagues
• Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Biology Open, September 2022