The ultrathin tendrils that zip messages around the nervous system are often drawn as smooth lines. But a new study adds some flourishes to that classical picture. Like a garland of cranberries hung on a Christmas tree, nerve fibers called axons may actually be a series of bumps, researchers suggest December 2 in Nature Neuroscience.
The claim is intriguing, but it’s too soon to redraw axons, says Pramod Pullarkat, a physicist who studies neuron structure at Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru, India. “I would not take this as an absolute fact yet,” he says. “But it is very much a possibility.”
Physicists who study fluids have known about this sort
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