Why Do Scientists Keep Finding New Organs?

Key Takeaways

did you know that you have a whole new organ I know it just popped up overnight I don't think I felt mine growing in did you no I'm just kidding the structure was actually always there but we're only just now recognizing what it is and how it really works and it's a pretty big deal it changes the way we see not only our bodies and how they work but also a whole host of important diseases but does that really make it a new organ and organize a group of tissues that perform a specific function there's a thing in our body called the interstitial also known as the interstitial space which is a layer of tissue we've known about for a long time it sits beneath our skin surrounding all of our organs and arteries and veins and muscles blanketing them on the inside just like our skin covers the outside of our body but a few months ago researchers were looking at a patient's bile duct for signs of cancer when they saw something in the interstitial that didn't match up with any known human anatomy see the way we typically study human tissues in a lab is to take an extremely thin slice and look at it on a slide under a microscope maybe dying at different colors to enable us to see certain structures but doing this removes all the fluids from the tissue sample and this means we've been missing something big up until now we've thought that the interstitial was just plain old connective tissue we have connective tissue all over our bodies connecting our bones to one another connecting our muscles to our bones and generally just kind of holding us together it's important but it's pretty ubiquitous and typically not very specialized but these researchers saw something new because they were looking at tissue samples in a new way using a technique called confocal laser endo microscopy they could see the true nature of the interest issue this visualization method uses a low powered laser to scan an area of the body and create a digital 3d reconstruction using this technique researchers could now observe a whole network of fluid-filled sacs structures that got drained and therefore essentially disappeared when we've looked at interstitial samples with the more traditional slice and sculpt method we've now observed that the interstitial is actually a complex network of interconnected fluid filled compartments supported by connective tissue proteins like collagen and elastin it may act as a shock absorber twisting and bending with our bodies as we move and keeping our organs in place keeping them from tearing or otherwise flopping or floating about in our is perhaps even more importantly the fluid in the inter system is connected to our lymphatic system draining to our lymph nodes and it may actually be a source of lymph which is huge because lymphatic fluid is an essential part of our immune system carrying cells that fight infection but it also plays a major role in the spread of cancer when cancer metastasizes it spreads from its tissue of origin to other parts of the body through the blood or the lymph so understanding the interstitial as a new key player in lymphatic system could give us a better understanding of cancer and why and how it spreads but the million-dollar question is the interstitial truly an organ no not yet at least for it to be classified as an organ it'll take lots of follow-up research and verification I mean the mesentery which we talked about last year still isn't an official organ so it takes some serious doing to get on that list really calling something an organ is mostly a semantic distinction it could help direct research toward this structure but the significance of this work is pretty independent of whether we call the interstitial a new organ or not this study not only revealed brand new information about the way our bodies work but also made us call into question the way we've been looking at them and last but not least this discovery has sparked conversation once again about what organs are and how we classify them and what counts as one a discussion that's constantly evolving in the scientific field I love that science is always changing and learning from itself so what else do you think we haven't known about our bodies this whole time let us know in the comments and make sure you subscribe to seeker to keep up with all the constantly evolving science news thanks for watching