Abstract
Tuft (or brush) cells are solitary chemosensory cells scattered throughout the epithelia of the respiratory and alimentary tract. The actin-binding protein villin (Vil1) is used as a marker of tuft cells and the villin promoter is frequently used to drive expression of the Cre recombinase in tuft cells. While there is widespread agreement about the expression of villin in tuft cells there are several disagreements related to tuft cell lineage commitment and function. We now show that many of these inconsistencies could be resolved by our surprising finding that intestinal tuft cells, in fact, do not express villin protein. Furthermore, we show that a related actin-binding protein, advillin which shares 75% homology with villin, has a tuft cell restricted expression in the gastrointestinal epithelium. Our study identifies advillin as a marker of tuft cells and provides a mechanism for driving gene expression in tuft cells but not in other epithelial cells of the gastrointestinal tract. Our findings fundamentally change the way we identify and study intestinal tuft cells.
Highlights
Tuft cells are solitary chemosensory cells scattered throughout the epithelia of the respiratory and alimentary tract
Based on a recent report, we noted that both villin and advillin expressing cells are present in the gastrointestinal epithelium[20]
Using H & E (Hematoxylin and Eosin) staining of mouse distal ileum we identified less than 0.5% of the cells with a unique candle-like “tufted” morphology associated with intestinal tuft cells (Fig. 1b)
Summary
Tuft (or brush) cells are solitary chemosensory cells scattered throughout the epithelia of the respiratory and alimentary tract. The microtubule associated DCLK1, the transient receptor potential cation channel (TRPM5), prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 1 (PTGS1) are used to identify tuft cells, all these proteins are expressed in other cells within the gastrointestinal and respiratory tract and at levels comparable to those seen in tuft/brush cells[11,13,14,15,16,17]. Pairing these markers with each other, together with the unique candle-like “tufted” morphology are frequently employed to identify tuft/brush cells. Based on that we propose that advillin expression in the gastrointestinal tract is restricted to tuft cells
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