What's Under Maintenance

Thirsty? That's because nervous and hormonal signals are telling your brain you're getting dehydrated. Such signals are vital for our cells' seamless healthy function, as they continuously transport molecules in and out across their membrane to remain essentially biochemically constant – the body-wide process called homeostasis. This study in fruit flies reveals how a set of neurons controls the transport of ions (molecules with a charge, essential for many processes including maintaining pH) a to achieve homeostasis through release of ion transport peptides (seen here in green in the fly gut) and interaction with a molecule called Gyc76C, the receptor for the ion transport peptide signals

Image made using Leica Microsystems microscopy

Read the published research article here

Written by Lindsey Goff

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Image from work by Jayati Gera and colleagues
• Neurobiology and Genetics, Theodor-Boveri-Institute, Biocenter, Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, Würzburg, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, November 2025