What is it about?
Small intestine is an important organ for an animal to absorb nutrient into the body. Tuft cells are minor but ubiquitous components of the surface cells of small intestine, which possess spool-shaped body and humorous 'tuft' on top of its head. There are long history of enigma regarding the reason of existence of tuft cell. We identified a strong tool to visualize whole bodies of tuft cells, and thought about the origin of tuft cells.
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Why is it important?
The most interesting characteristics we found was that tuft cells are specially activated compared with other nutrient-absorbing cells. And we assume that tuft cells are originated from nutrient-asborbing cells. However, the proof was technically difficult so far. Tuft cells are also seen in other intestines, including colon. Westphalen et al. (2014) suggested that tuft cells are colon-cancer initiating cells. If our technical difficulties are overcome, our tool may enable the identification of a very beginning cell of the colon cancer.
Perspectives
Compared with the previous tools, the visualization of tuft cells using our new tool is striking. However, our additional discovery of the basic 'concept' of tuft cells (selective phosphorylation of presumably ubiquitous protein in nutrient-absorbing cells) would be even more striking.
M.D., Ph. D. Masato Asai
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Tyrosine Phosphorylation of an Actin-Binding Protein Girdin Specifically Marks Tuft Cells in Human and Mouse Gut, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry, April 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1369/0022155417702586.
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