How Do Our Organs Know When to Stop Growing?
Published:22 Dec.2021 Source:Université de Genève
The smallest fish in the world, the Paedocypris, measures only 7 millimeters. This is nothing compared to the 9 meters of the whale shark. The small fish shares many of the same genes and the same anatomy with the shark, but the dorsal and caudal fins, gills, stomach and heart, are thousands of times smaller!
How do organs and tissues of this miniature fish stop growing very quickly, unlike those of their giant cousin? A multidisciplinary team led by scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPIPKS), Germany, was able to answer this fundamental question by studying its physics and using mathematical equations, as revealed by their work published in the journal Nature.