Assessing early postnatal development of the enteric glial network

Abstract

The enteric glial network is instrumental in intestinal barrier maintenance and repair, but is immature at birth. At birth, enteric glia are restricted to the submucosal and myenteric plexuses, and are driven to populate the lamina propria by microbial colonization and changes in microbial populations at weaning. Our lab uses a comparative pig model to describe and quantify early postnatal development of the enteric glial network. We hypothesized the density and distribution of glial cell subtypes would change within the early postnatal period, illustrating early postnatal development and maturation of the enteric glial network. Using the iDISCO three-dimensional imaging technique, the glial network in 1-, 7-, 14-, and 21-day-old pigs was analyzed by adapting an algorithm to quantify the volume, maximum and mean intensities of glial markers of GFAP, Sox10, and S100β within manually isolated villi. In the lamina propria, GFAP density by volume decreases (P=0.0228) while S100β increases (P=0.0007) from 1- to 21- days. Between 1- and 21- days old Sox 10 tends to increase (P=0.2241, one-way ANOVA) - see graph. We believe this indicates GFAP+ cells change their expression profiles over the very early postnatal period to increase production of S100β, a known inflammatory mediator, which is participating in immune responses to colonizing bacteria, while Sox10 acts as a marker of proliferation. Understanding this early postnatal development will allow for modulation of this system, accelerating maturation of repair mechanisms. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.