nature in an experiment i really know yet why is like so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea

but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature

welcome back to the Nature.

Welcome back to the nature podcast.

This week, how stretching skin leads to more skin.

And the latest in DNA mapping news.

I'm Chamany Bandell.

And I'm Niky Bandell. And I'm Nick Howe.

As you may be aware, our spin-off podcast, CoronaPod, is now part of this show.

So if you just want to hear the latest coronavirus updates, check out the show notes for all the timings so you can skip ahead and listen to that. Although there's plenty of great non-coron

science if you stick around. So what have we got first on the show this week, Charmany?

Well, reporter Benjamin Thompson has been looking into skin, and I've been trying to find a way to explain this without sounding like a serial killer who wants to steal your face.

But the skin is a genuinely remarkable organ. Every day it's subjected to constant stretching, folding, compressing, yet it manages to maintain its integrity, keeping

the outside out and the inside in. One peculiar property that the skin has is that if you do

stretch it, it responds to the stretching by growing more skin. Now quite why this is the case

has been unclear, but that might be about to change.

This week, a paper in nature outlines the mechanisms underlying this property.

Benjamin spoke to one of the authors of the paper, Cedric Blompin from the University Libra de Brussels

in Belgium, who explained how the structure of skin makes it so good at what it does.

The skin, you know, is our first barrier against the external environment.

And so for that, the skin needs to be always in a perfect shape.

And so the skin is renewing itself throughout the life of the animals.

...