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If the star strikers from two opposing football teams swapped sides, they might both find that the goals dry up without their familiar teammates to support them. This is the case for two enzymes that produce the same material in fruit flies. Chitin is a structural polymer that forms both part of the tough insect exoskeleton and a protective lining of internal structures. Two different enzymes create chitin, but a new study showed that they’re not interchangeable. One produces chitin for the exoskeleton and breathing tubes (pink in the trachea pictured), and the other for the gut lining, and neither could do their job in the other’s position. This could explain how insects form forms of chitin with unique textures and functions, and will be of interest to bioengineers harnessing its biodegradable sturdiness for biomedical materials, or ecologists and epidemiologists hunting targeted insect control tactics.

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 Joan Bertran-Mas and Ettore De Giorgio, and colleagues
• Institut de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona, IBMB-CSIC, Department of Cells and Tissues, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Genetics, September 2025