Tuft cells – tufty with tiny finger-like projections – of the intestinal lining act like stem cells regenerating different cell types after damage. In the lab, they can generate multi-cell type organoids, and unlike other stem cell types, they're resistant to radiation
Read the published research article here
Image from work by Lulu Huang, Jochem H. Bernink and Amir Giladi, and colleagues
Hubrecht Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Published in Nature, October 2024
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Odd-looking cells in intestine seem to use chemical sensors, including taste receptors, to detect pathogens such as parasites and sound the alarm
While poring over tissue slides in the 1920s, a Soviet microscopist spotted an oddball cell squeezed into the intestinal lining. With its bulbous shape and bristly top knot, it didn't look like any of its neighbors. He was baffled—and so were later researchers who spotted the same kind of cells in the following decades. What they did was a mystery. "It was amazing to me that this huge piece of biology was out there undiscovered," says mucosal immunologist Michael Howitt of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who began to study those tuft cells, as they are called, in 2011.
What was known about them only made the mystery more tantalizing. Some tuft cells display the same chemical-sensing surface proteins that act as taste receptors on the tongue. And the cells station themselves in the linings of many body structures and organs—not only the intestines, but also the lungs, pancreas, gallbladder, urethra, and nasal passages. "Almost any hollow tube in the body has something like a tuft cell," says immunologist Mark Anderson of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). But why would the pancreas or urethra possibly need a sense of taste?
Now, a wave of recent research reveals a reason. Tuft cells serve as sentinels along the body's invasion routes, relying on their sensory capabilities to detect pathogens and allergens that are inhaled or trying to infiltrate in other ways. Although not part of the immune or nervous system—they are a type of epithelial cell—tuft cells interact with those systems to help coordinate protective responses in many parts of the body, scientists have found.
How Gut Parasites Trigger a Two-Step Alert That Suppresses Appetite
Scientists have discovered how parasitic gut infections progress from silent invasions to symptoms like appetite loss. Specialized sentinel cells called tuft cells detect parasites and release a chemical messenger, acetylcholine. Initially, they release it in quick bursts, but as infection triggers inflammation, they switch to a slower, steady leak. This sustained signal reaches neighboring enterochromaffin cells, prompting them to release serotonin. Only this prolonged chemical conversation generates enough serotonin to alert the vagus nerve, which connects gut to brain, triggering reduced food intake. This two-phase system explains the delay between infection and symptoms, revealing how the gut coordinates immune defense with protective behaviors like fasting.
Paracrine signalling between tuft cells and enterochromaffin cells is a key mode of immune–sensory and gut–brain communication, and acc
