Hubrecht Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 3584 CT Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Cell. 2013 Jul 18;154(2):274-84. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.07.004.
Due to its intense self-renewal kinetics and its simple repetitive architecture, the intestinal epithelium has become a prime model for studying adult stem cells in health and disease. Transgenic mouse models allow in vivo visualization and genetic lineage tracing of individual intestinal stem cells and their offspring. Fluorescently marked stem cells can be isolated for molecular analyses or can be cultured to build ever-expanding "mini-guts" in vitro. These studies are filling in the outlines of a robust homeostatic self-renewal process that defies some of the classical definitions of stem cell behavior, such as asymmetric division, quiescence, and exhaustion.
由于其强烈的自我更新动力学和简单的重复结构，肠道上皮已成为研究健康和疾病中成年干细胞的主要模型。转基因小鼠模型允许对单个肠道干细胞及其后代进行体内可视化和遗传谱系追踪。荧光标记的干细胞可用于分子分析，也可用于培养，以在体外构建不断扩大的“迷你肠道”。这些研究正在填补一个强大的动态自我更新过程的轮廓，该过程违背了一些干细胞行为的经典定义，例如不对称分裂、静止和衰竭。
