Bacterial colonization stimulates a complex physiological response in the immature human intestinal epithelium
Abstract
The human gastrointestinal tract is immature at birth, yet must adapt to dramatic changes such as oral nutrition and microbial colonization. The confluence of these factors can lead to severe inflammatory disease in premature infants; however, investigating complex environment-host interactions is difficult due to limited access to immature human tissue. Here, we demonstrate that the epithelium of human pluripotent stem cell-derived human intestinal organoids is globally similar to the immature human epithelium and we utilize HIOs to investigate complex host-microbe interactions in this naïve epithelium. Our findings demonstrate that the immature epithelium is intrinsically capable of establishing a stable host-microbe symbiosis. Microbial colonization leads to complex contact and hypoxia driven responses resulting in increased antimicrobial peptide production, maturation of the mucus layer, and improved barrier function. These studies lay the groundwork for an improved mechanistic understanding of how colonization influences development of the immature human intestine.
Data availability
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RNA-seq of human intestinal organoids colonized with E. coli and other immature intestinal tissuesPublicly available at ArrayExpress (accession no. E-MTAB-5801).
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Transcriptional Profiling of human pluripotent stem cells and and derived tissuesPublicly available at ArrayExpress (accession no. E-MTAB-3158).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (U19AI116482)
- Vincent B Young
National Institutes of Health (U01DK103141)
- Jason R Spence
National Institutes of Health (T32AI007528)
- David R Hill
National Institutes of Health (UL1TR000433)
- David R Hill
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All animal experiments were approved by the University of Michigan Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC; protocol # PRO00006609).
Human subjects: Normal, de-identified human fetal intestinal tissue was obtained from the University of Washington Laboratory of Developmental Biology. Normal, de-identified human adult intestinal issue was obtained from deceased organ donors through the Gift of Life, Michigan. All human tissue used in this work was obtained from non-living donors, was de-identified and was conducted with approval from the University of Michigan IRB (protocol # HUM00093465 and HUM00105750).
Copyright
© 2017, Hill et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Further reading
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- Developmental Biology
Correct intestinal morphogenesis depends on the early embryonic process of gut rotation, an evolutionarily conserved program in which a straight gut tube elongates and forms into its first loops. However, the gut tube requires guidance to loop in a reproducible manner. The dorsal mesentery (DM) connects the gut tube to the body and directs the lengthening gut into stereotypical loops via left-right (LR) asymmetric cellular and extracellular behavior. The LR asymmetry of the DM also governs blood and lymphatic vessel formation for the digestive tract, which is essential for prenatal organ development and postnatal vital functions including nutrient absorption. Although the genetic LR asymmetry of the DM has been extensively studied, a divider between the left and right DM has yet to be identified. Setting up LR asymmetry for the entire body requires a Lefty1+ midline barrier to separate the two sides of the embryo, without it, embryos have lethal or congenital LR patterning defects. Individual organs including the brain, heart, and gut also have LR asymmetry, and while the consequences of left and right signals mixing are severe or even lethal, organ-specific mechanisms for separating these signals remain poorly understood. Here, we uncover a midline structure composed of a transient double basement membrane, which separates the left and right halves of the embryonic chick DM during the establishment of intestinal and vascular asymmetries. Unlike other basement membranes of the DM, the midline is resistant to disruption by intercalation of Netrin4 (Ntn4). We propose that this atypical midline forms the boundary between left and right sides and functions as a barrier necessary to establish and protect organ asymmetry.
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- Developmental Biology
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