PIEZO-dependent mechano-sensing of the niche is essential for intestinal stem cell fate decision and maintenance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Stem cells continuously perceive and respond to various environmental signals to maintain homeostasis. In addition to biochemical factors, the stem cell niche is subjected to mechanical and physical cues. However, it remains unclear how stem cells can sense mechanical signals from their niche in vivo . Since intestinal stem cells constantly and directly face the external environment, we investigated the roles of mechano-sensing PIEZO ion channels in the gut stem cell niche. By employing mouse genetics and performing single-cell RNAseq analysis, we revealed the absolute requirement for PIEZO channels in intestinal stem cell (ISC) state dynamics and maintenance. In vivo measurement of basement membrane region stiffness demonstrated that ISCs reside in a more rigid microenvironment at the bottom of the crypt. Using 3D and 2D organoid systems combined with bioengineered substrates and a cell stretching device, we found that PIEZO channels are activated by high extracellular matrix stiffness and tissue tension to modulate ISC behavior. This study delineates the mechanistic cascade of PIEZO channel activation in ISCs from the upstream extracellular stimuli through the downstream signaling activation that coordinates stem cell fate decision and maintenance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".