Polyamines

The gut is an important organ responsible for digestion, absorption, and metabolism of dietary nutrients. The mucosa of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is lined with epithelium that has the shortest turnover rate of any tissue in the body. Maintenance of GI epithelial homeostasis depends on a complex interplay between processes involving intestinal epithelial cell (IEC) proliferation, differentiation, migration, and apoptosis. Under normal physiological situations, undifferentiated epithelial cells continuously replicate in the proliferative zone within the crypts and differentiate as they migrate up towards the luminal surface of the colon and villous tips in the small intestine. To maintain a stable number of enterocytes, cell division must be counterbalanced by the process of apoptotic cell death, a fundamental biological process involving selective cell deletion to regulate tissue homeostasis. Apoptosis occurs in the crypt area, where it maintains a critical balance in cell number between newly divided and surviving cells, and at the luminal surface of the colon and villous tips in the small intestine, where differentiated cells are lost. This rapid dynamic turnover rate of intestinal epithelial cells is highly regulated and critically controlled by numerous factors, including cellular polyamines

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Last date updated on April, 2024