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Messed-up metabolism during development may lead guts to coil the wrong way

Experiments in tadpoles may provide clues to a condition in people called intestinal malrotation

Five translucent tadpoles face upwards. Their intestines are seen in a yellow circle, right below their heads.

Like human intestines, frog intestines grow counterclockwise in a compact coil, as shown here in these tadpoles.

Julia Grzymkowski

By Helen Bradshaw

Inside the African clawed frog, intestines grow just like humans’: neatly coiled counterclockwise. Experiments now show how that process can go awry.

Interfering with tadpoles’ metabolism leads to a chain of cellular disruptions that causes their intestines to grow in the wrong direction, researchers from North Carolina State University in Raleigh report February 19 in Development.