Lymphatics act as a signaling hub to regulate intestinal stem cell activity.

ABSTRACT: Barrier epithelia depend upon resident stem cells for homeostasis, defense, and repair. Epithelial stem cells of small and large intestines (ISCs) respond to their local microenvironments (niches) to fulfill a continuous demand for tissue turnover. The complexity of these niches and underlying communication pathways are not fully known. Here, we report a lymphatic network at the intestinal crypt base that intimately associates with ISCs. Employing in vivo loss of function and lymphatic:organoid cocultures, we show that crypt lymphatics maintain ISCs and inhibit their precocious differentiation. Pairing single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, we apply BayesPrism to deconvolve expression within spatial features and develop SpaceFold to robustly map the niche at high resolution, exposing lym

SUBMITTER: Niec RE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9271639 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature