Top to Bottom

Ever tried talking while doing a handstand? It's tricky. Your body works best the right way up. Just like cells in your body do. Cell shape, structure and how components inside cells are organised help them figure out their orientation – this is called cell polarity. Disrupted cell polarity can cause cancer and other diseases, including gut disorders. Cells lining your intestine are 'polarised' – with one side facing the gut tube interior (apical), the other the blood stream (basal) – along an apicobasal axis. In mice, RNA and proteins in these cells are asymmetrically spread along this axis. Researchers investigate if this happens in humans using laser-capture microdissection to isolate top and bottom segments from intestinal epithelial cells (pictured using H&E staining). Analysing the location of genes actively making proteins in these segments revealed that RNA and proteins are asymmetrically spread along this axis. This research provides a way to better understand the biology of the human intestine.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Roy Novoselsky and colleagues
• Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, December 2024