Ancestors

Toot

Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-19 at 19:04

Have scientists discovered a new organ that accounts for about 20% of your body weight?

It's called the 'interstitium'. It's a network of channels between the other organs. The fluid in these channels is called 'interstitial fluid', and it transports nutrients and molecules that carry communications between cells, especially involving the immune system. The interstitium drains into the lymph system, but it's not the same thing.

Here's an interesting show about why it remained unnoticed for so long. Basically the problem was that scientists were studying dried-up tissue samples instead of living tissue!

Thanks to @rustoleumlove for alerting me to the interstitium here on Mastodon before I heard about it in on the radio.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/interstitium

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Descendants

Written by DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄) on 2025-01-19 at 19:07

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove

"Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues"

Petros C Benias, et al

2018

Sci Rep. 2018 Mar 27;8:4947. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-23062-6

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5869738/

Edit: or more accessibly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstitium

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-19 at 19:11

@dougmerritt - thanks for these extra links!

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Written by Twotired on 2025-01-19 at 19:22

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove Episodes like this are why I love #RadioLab

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Written by llewelly on 2025-01-19 at 20:01

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove

I feel like this isn't a new discovery??

Apparently the wikipedia page was started in 2018. Not sure whether 6 years old qualifies as new.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Interstitium&diff=856444742&oldid=851065115

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-19 at 21:01

@llewelly - if it's not new to the people reading my post, they will not boost it.

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Written by llewelly on 2025-01-19 at 21:03

@johncarlosbaez

wait a minute, I boosted it. Should I unboost it?

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-19 at 21:10

@llewelly - if you consider it boring and old, please unboost it.

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Written by llewelly on 2025-01-19 at 21:11

@johncarlosbaez it's not new, but it's definitely interesting!

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Written by Bill Seitz on 2025-01-19 at 20:15

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove that's why i've always been a fan of vivisectioning.... with a nice chianti

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Written by BradleyKSherman on 2025-01-19 at 20:22

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove

It's mayhem out there in the extracellular matrix:

Human mesenchymal stem cells release functional mitochondria in extracellular vesicles

https://www.oarsijournal.com/article/S1063-4584(21)00100-X/fulltext

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-19 at 21:30

@bks @rustoleumlove - cool! I don't even know anything about "extracellular vesicles".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_vesicle

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Written by BradleyKSherman on 2025-01-19 at 22:11

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove

Each of us is 30,000,000,000,000 cells just kicking down the cobblestones, looking for fun and feeling groovy.

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Written by Anne Ominous on 2025-01-19 at 22:17

@bks @johncarlosbaez

lol yup..

and when you consider how many microbes we're hauling around with us -- each with their own genomes, and proteins and stuff...

PHEW it's hectic in here LMAO

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Written by Anne Ominous on 2025-01-19 at 22:14

@johncarlosbaez @bks

i'm a co-author on a few extracellular vesicles papers.

whenever i see "EV"

i dont think electric vehicle 🤣

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Written by Uffe V. Poulsen on 2025-01-19 at 20:59

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove Reminds of this recent discovery of an extra layer of lining around the brain. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc8810

(There was some serious dispute about credit and authorship, as I recall.)

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-19 at 21:20

@uffe1974 @rustoleumlove - hmm, I'll have to read about that! You're reminding me of how people thought 'glial cells' were just boring gray support tissue in the brain, and then they discovered - surprise, surprise! - that they do interesting things.

The idea that any part of a system that's been evolving for many million years doesn't have fine-tuned multiple functions seems shortsighted!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glia

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Written by RejZoR on 2025-01-19 at 21:02

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove That's pretty cool. It's like we discovered dark matter in our body. It has been there the entire time, we just didn't notice it.

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Written by Andrew on 2025-01-19 at 22:13

@johncarlosbaez @rustoleumlove ugh I wish they'd focus on bug fixes instead of adding all these new organs nobody asked for

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Written by John Carlos Baez on 2025-01-20 at 03:44

@cinebox - I'm glad that at least the interstitium doesn't use AI.

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