Invasive prenatal diagnosis techniques include chorionic villus sampling (CVS), amniocentesis, cordocentesis or percutaneous umbilical blood sampling (PUBS), fetal tissue sampling, as well as embryoscopy and fetoscopy (Table 2). Some diagnostic results may be obtained by more than one technique: for example, fetal karyotype can be obtained from cells from amniocentesis, chorionic villus samplin...

Epithelial cells of the gut are characterized by rapid, constant cell renewal. The death of epithelial cells at the villus tips occurs so regularly that it must be regarded as a well-controlled cell death, designated as apoptosis. However, only limited information has been available on the mechanism of this phenomenon, including the disposal of the effete cells. In the small intestine of the gu...

The rodent intestinal mucosa undergoes a remarkable morphogenesis as the crypt-villus axis is formed. Endoderm-mesenchymal interactions play a critical role in this process. Epimorphin is a mesenchymal protein postulated to play a role in lung and skin morphogenesis. The rat homologue, syntaxin 2, belongs to a family of integral membrane proteins that function in vesicle docking and fusion. To ...

The rat fructose transporter normally appears after completion of weaning but can be precociously induced by early feeding of a high-fructose diet. In this study, the crypt-villus site, the metabolic nature of the signal, and the age dependence of induction were determined. In weaning rats fed high-glucose pellets, GLUT-5 mRNA expression was modest, localized mainly in the upper three-fourths o...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Glutamine is an important energy source for the intestinal epithelium, and its supplementation protects intestinal epithelial cells by induction of glutathione. However, mechanisms of glutathione induction in cells at various stages of differentiation along the crypt to villus axis are not well understood. This study examined induction of glutathione in response to glutamine ...

The recirculation of lymphocytes through the intestinal mucosa is important for specific immune defense, but the origin and differentiation of intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) are not fully understood. The present study therefore used intravital microscopy to investigate the migration of IEL to the villus mucosa and Peyer's patches of the small intestine. IEL were separated from inverted murin...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of garlic powder (GP) black seed (BS) and plant premix (GP and BS) in the diet on broiler growth performance and intestinal morphology. included 480 Hubbard broiler chicks(day-old). There were 4 treatment groups each consisting of 3 replicates. The four dietary treatments consisted of a control (basal diet), basal diet +0.5% GP, basal diet +0....

To identify the site of stimulation of sucrase by a sucrose diet, changes in sucrase-specific activity of jejunal mucosa were studied after introduction of sucrose diet to carbohydrate-deprived rats. Results were correlated with simultaneous changes in villus gradients of sucrase-specific activity. Simultaneous with the introduction of sucrose diet, [(3)H]thymidine (100 muCi) was administered i...

Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) uses InlA to invade the tips of the intestinal villi, a location at which cell extrusion generates a transient defect in epithelial polarity that exposes the receptor for InlA, E-cadherin, on the cell surface. As the dying cell is removed from the epithelium, the surrounding cells reorganize to form a multicellular junction (MCJ) that Lm exploits to find its basolate...

PURPOSE To determine whether the compromised intestinal villus blood flow in a rat model of endotoxemia could be improved by continuous infusion of the phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitor milrinone. METHODS Twenty-four anesthetized and ventilated rats were laparotomized and an ileal portion was exteriorized and opened by an antimesenteric incision. The ileal segment was fixed with the mucosal s...