Ear Bending

There's still a lot to be learnt about how the inner ear's complex architecture – composed of many cell types and regions with specific roles in hearing and balance – develops in the embryo. Now, studying zebrafish larvae, researchers have defined an atlas of genes 'turned on' in single cells of the developing inner ear. These 3D renderings from microscopy images show the normal inner ear architecture (left) and its failure to develop (right) in larvae lacking the lmx1bb gene, thereby revealing this gene's important role, along with that of others in specific zones.

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 Akankshi Munjal and Kalki Kukreja, and colleagues
• Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife (reviewed preprint), May 2026