A team of scientists from Singapore and France, led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck, Principal Investigator at the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has described a novel ‘microtube’-based platform to study how tubular organs, such as the heart and the kidneys, form under the various topographical restrictions commonly experienced inside the body. This study was published online in Nature Communications on 15 November 2017.