创新背景

肠细胞和皮肤细胞一样，会经历周转帮助维持肠道组织生长和组织更新之间的平衡稳定，这是一个死亡和被新细胞取代的过程。肠细胞的死亡过程是在生理稳态和感染和组织损伤等应激条件下通过凋亡而死亡。目前公认的细胞三种死亡类型：程序性死亡、细胞坏死和细胞凋亡，新的细胞死亡类型发现对细胞研究发展具有开创性意义。

创新过程

传统的肠道更新理论是细胞衰老或受损以细胞凋亡的方式死亡，是细胞进行代谢更新的主动性死亡方式。以前的研究表示，肠道细胞的功能和更新机制是由专门细胞来完成的，如肠道内分泌细胞和潘氏细胞等。

相关研究小组在果蝇体内的肠道上皮细胞中发现了一种从未发现过的细胞死亡类型。垂死的细胞在显微镜里黝黑无比，研究人员将其称为erebosis，基于希腊语中的黑暗“erebos”。相关论文《Erebosis，肠道肠细胞稳态更新过程中的一种新的细胞死亡机制》于2022年4月25日发表在《PLoS Biol.》上，认为这种新的细胞死亡方式对肠道的新陈代谢起作用。

研究人员发现这些果蝇内脏中的黑色细胞中带有血管紧张素转换酶，一种对降低血压有用的酶Ance。且果蝇肠道中的Ance表达并不完整，所在的细胞具有奇怪的特征，缺少细胞骨架、线粒体、核膜、细胞器和荧光蛋白，有时甚至缺乏细胞存活所必需的DNA及其他细胞物质。由于包含Ance的细胞通常靠近肠道新细胞的出生位置，研究人员推测这种新型细胞死亡与肠道中的周转有关。

与细胞凋亡的突然和爆炸性的细胞死亡不同，erebosis是渐进的。为了证明这是一种新型的细胞死亡过程，研究人员进行了几项测试。首先，实验性地阻止细胞凋亡，发现这并不能阻止肠道稳态，表明肠道细胞的新陈代谢，可以避开细胞凋亡的过程。其次，垂死的细胞没有显示出任何已知细胞死亡类型的分子标记，与以往的细胞死亡类型有所区别。

研究人员认为erebosis有望成为肠道细胞研究的开创性发现，如果能够研究人体肠道中是否像果蝇一样也存在erbosis过程，对于细胞研究将有极大的开拓发展意义。

创新关键点

从细胞死亡方式入手研究新型细胞死亡类型。

Fruit fly viscera discovers novel cell death type

The traditional theory of intestinal renewal is that cells die in the form of apoptosis due to aging or damage, which is an active death method for cells to carry out metabolic renewal. Previous studies have shown that the function and renewal mechanism of intestinal cells is performed by specialized cells, such as enteroendocrine cells and Paneth cells.
A team of researchers has discovered a never-before-seen type of cell death in the gut epithelial cells of fruit flies. Dying cells look so dark under the microscope that the researchers call it erebosis, after the Greek word for dark "erebos." The related paper "Erebosis,a new cell death mechanism during homeostatic turnover of gut enterocytes" was published in "PLoS Biol." on April 25, 2022. metabolism works.
The researchers found that the black cells in the guts of these flies carry angiotensin-converting enzyme, an enzyme that is useful in lowering blood pressure. Moreover, the expression of Ance in the Drosophila gut is incomplete, and the cells in which it is located have strange characteristics, lacking the cytoskeleton, mitochondria, nuclear membrane, organelles and fluorescent proteins, and sometimes even lacking DNA and other cellular substances necessary for cell survival. Because Ance-containing cells are often close to where new cells in the gut are born, the researchers speculate that this new type of cell death is related to turnover in the gut.
Unlike the sudden and explosive cell death of apoptosis, erebosis is gradual. To demonstrate that this is a novel cell death process, the researchers performed several tests. First, they experimentally blocked apoptosis and found that this did not prevent intestinal homeostasis, suggesting that intestinal cell metabolism can circumvent the process of apoptosis. Second, the dying cells did not show any molecular markers of known cell death types, distinguishing them from previous cell death types.
The researchers believe that erebosis is expected to be a groundbreaking discovery in the study of intestinal cells. If it is possible to study whether the erbosis process exists in the human intestine like Drosophila, it will have great pioneering and developmental significance for cell research.