Gut Mapping

Our gut is a complex and diverse organ made up of many specialised compartments and cell types. But how the colon changes when healing after injury, for example with inflammatory bowel diseases, isn’t understood. Researchers compared the colons of healthy mice (left column) with those who had been suffering with colitis – an inflammation of the colon – for a week followed by a week to heal from the damage (right column; colons have been furled like ‘Swiss rolls’). Histological staining shows the structures of the colon (top row), but the researchers then used a technique called spatial transcriptomics to map what genes were active in each section of the colon during the healing response (bottom row). This ‘gut map’ is a useful tool to further study the specific genes and signalling pathways identified that may play pivotal roles in response to damage in certain regions of the gut.

Written by Sophie Arthur

Sophie Arthur

former Science Communications Officer MRC LMS

Formerly a stem cell biologist, Sophie has since moved into science communication working at the MRC LMS. She also writes an award winning science and education blog Soph talks science.

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• Image from work by Sara M. Parigi, Ludvig Larsson and Srustidhar Das, and colleagues
• Division of Immunology and Allergy, Department of Medicine Solna, Karolinska Institute and University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, February 2022