Just the right timing for the festive season!
While many studies focus on biological processes in the small intestine, research in the colonic epithelium is lacking behind. To this end, Koen and Maurice worked to improve culture conditions for human colonic organoids to use them in a robust and scalable manner. Through extensive characterisation with in vivo data, they found that the switch from regeneration towards homeostasis is accompanied by a switch between two stem cell states. An initial, ASCL2+/LGR5+ fetal-like stem cell population concludes the regenerative process, while the subsequent switch to an OLFM4-high adult-like state enables efficient differentiation into all lineages. Interested? Read the full story as a preprint here:
Dynamics and plasticity of stem cells in the regenerating human colonic epithelium
