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Endocrine Abstracts (2016) 44 S6.2 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.44.S6.2

Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.


Body surfaces, like the skin or the gut lumen, are protected from the outer world by a layer of epithelial cells. Almost all epithelial sensory cells communicate stimuli from the outer world to neurons via direct neurotransmission, but in the gut, the epithelial sensory cells, the enteroendocrine cell, is thought to communicate indirectly via the release of hormones.

However, enteroendocrine cells have striking features of epithelial cell transducers: they are electrically excitable, possess voltage-gated channels, express synaptic proteins; and recently, we reported that nerves innervate them. The source and function of these connections remains to be documented. Here, we discovered that enteroendocrine cells transduce nutrient signals to cranial nerves.

First, we adapted a neurotracing vector, based on the neurotropic rabies virus, and used it to define a physical innervation of enteroendocrine cells by cranial nerves. Second, we developed a co-culture system in which enteroendocrine cells and neurons connect. And third, using electrophysiology, we found that a glucose stimulus applied to the enteroendocrine cell induces excitatory post-synaptic potentials and action potential spikes in the connected neuron. Notably, glucose does not activate a neuron by itself.

The functional innervation of enteroendocrine cells by cranial nerves represents a novel neural circuit for the brain to receive and respond to sensory stimuli from the gut lumen.

Volume 44

Society for Endocrinology BES 2016

Brighton, UK
07 Nov 2016 - 09 Nov 2016

Society for Endocrinology 

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