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The Anatomical Record digests new findings on the twists and turns and surprises of the gastrointestinal system in a new Special Issue

2023; Wiley; Volume: 306; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/ar.25156

1932-8494

Jeffrey T. Laitman, Heather F. Smith,

Dietary Effects on Health

While sitting on his lap watching a singing baby shark on television (try this for 2 hours straight!), JL's 4-year-old granddaughter tapped on his belly. “What's in there, Pop?” said his ever-curious future heir. “That's where the stomach is. Where food goes. It helps turn what we eat into energy,” JL explained in his best professorial mode. “But why is yours so big? Looks like you ate an entire chicken, two fish, three bananas, four potatoes…” “Ok, ok,” JL tried to damp down her energetic description. “…five abogodos, six eggs…” she continued, not taking a breath. “OK, already! By the way, you mean avocados; what you said means lawyer in Spanish,” JL tried fruitlessly to educate.” “Momma!” the little tornado shrieked, “Pop ate a whole Spanish lawyer!” “No, I didn't eat a lawyer or six eggs, or a chicken,” JL tried desperately to re-direct his effusive little one. “There are a lot of different parts in there and they change as you grow and age in response to your distinctive anatomy, and what, and how much, one's eaten over the years. Make sense?” “Why did you eat a Spanish lawyer? Do you eat other types of lawyers? Is that why your belly is so large? How do you turn lawyer-food into energy?” she went on and on, now a directionless and unstoppable missile (even “Baby Shark” was better than this!). Although her last point was actually of some interest—turning lawyers into positive energy—JL was totally exasperated at this juncture and did what every failed grandparent does: gave her back to mom and dad. That is the beauty of grandkids: you can kiss them on the forehead and return them! While JL's attempt to explain the complexities of the gastrointestinal system to his granddaughter was a total failure (HS probably would have succeeded, using her more gentle patience to explain how a happy tortoise eats leaves), one can understand the confusion on the part of the little one. Arguably, of the many diverse and complex vertebrate organ systems, the realm of the gastrointestinal system is the most varied, widespread through the body, and, due to its many constituent and entwining parts, arguably the most complex evolutionarily. It is really mind-boggling when one thinks of the many components and their specialized cells, innervation, vascular supply, and embryology that must first come together to form an organ, and then subsequently integrate numerous and essential functions. This Special Issue brings to the fore a fascinating smorgasbord of new findings on components of this remarkable system. The Special Issue, entitled “From anatomy to immunity in the gastrointestinal system,” is Guest Edited by Alfredo B. Menendez of the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Universite de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, in Canada, and has been overseen by The Anatomical Record Associate Editor Julian Guttman of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. First, we welcome Dr. Menendez to our Anatomical Record family. His proficiency in melding the anatomy of the gut coupled with his expertise in studying bacterial infections, cell signaling and infectious diseases, and GI pathologies, has offered new insights into the gut's role in immunity and fighting disease. We are proud to have Dr. Menendez's thoughts and advances in our journal. Next, a few words on Dr. Guttman, Julian to us, who is a home-grown product of our parent society, the American Association for Anatomy (AAA) (which is so densely populated with Canadians that we even know what “poutine” is). Julian has literally grown up in the AAA, winning a host of awards as a student and even serving on our Board of Directors. He is a super proud, Maple-leaf-flag waving Canadian, and has had the entire AR Board meet in Vancouver, trek to the incomparable wilderness of Whistler, and then sail around Vancouver, making friends with orcas (JL got sea-sick as our former Editor-in-Chief, Kurt Albertine and other AR Board members gleefully took photos, all—save JL—while listening to eloquent Canadian AAA legend, Wayne Vogl, spout on about whales; Albertine et al., 2017; Vogl, 2017) Julian has contributed much to the well-being of our journal and, as this issue goes to press, we give him a big Canadian hug as he leaves us to take the reins as Editor-in-Chief of our Wiley sister journal, Cytoskeleton. May your protein filaments always be strong, as we wish you adieu! To chart the history of The Anatomical Record publications on the varied components and functions of the gastrointestinal universe would take more pages than our journal is allotted yearly, so we will not even attempt any comprehensive overview. Having said that, it is always a treat to delve into our archives and note important work, themes, and people. Indeed, our first report on structures related to the GI system sensu lato can be traced to Volume 1 of our journal in 1907 (The Anatomical Record was birthed in 1906 with Volume 1 running from 1906 through early 1908). For those of you not aware of our history (shame, shame!) The Anatomical Record came to be as a component of its mother stem, The American Journal of Anatomy which was launched 6 years earlier in 1901 (see Pauly, 1991). The period of the late 19th through early 20th centuries was an extraordinary time for the anatomical sciences, with “American” science “coming of age” and wanting its own voice in the then Euro-centered scientific world. Indeed, our parent society, the AAA, was founded in 1888 (then called the Association of American Anatomists) with the incomparable polymath Joseph Leidy (whose biographer, Leonard Warren, entitled his book, The Last Man Who Knew Everything, Warren, 1989) of the University of Pennsylvania (the first US medical school) unanimously chosen as its first president (probably the only time in AAA history that membership has ever agreed on anything!) (see Basmajian, 1987 for discussion). Our journal came about as a vehicle for faster, often shorter, contributions of our ever-energetic troop of scientists coupled with a ready record of society activities and proceedings. It was a heady and exciting time for our growing family and our predecessors were eager to get reports of their science and findings published and out to the community! Back to the gut. Looking through our vaults, we find that the first reports in The Anatomical Record dealing with aspects of the GI system/abdominal region appear in abstracts of presentations made during the 21st Session of the AAA held at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in December of 1906 and reported in our journal in 1907. These were by the great comparative anatomists, and revered Columbia professors, George S. Huntington and Charles F.W. McClure (both of whom went on to become presidents of the AAA) charting the variations and comparative anatomy of the venous system, particularly the caval tributaries (Huntington & McClure, 1907a, 1907b) and by then colleague William Darbach (1907). The first report on a GI organ appears to be that presented by their Cornell colleague, Wesley Baldwin (1907), at the same meeting, on the accessory pancreatic duct in humans. Over the next decade, full-length papers were being submitted to the journal with greats such as Florence Sabin of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine contributing insights on the development of abdominal lymphatics (Sabin, 1912). BTW, if you do not know about Florence Sabin, you should find a way to do penance: Professor Sabin was the first woman appointed to the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, first woman elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and first woman elected President of the AAA! Talk about notables publishing within our pages! So many publications on the GI system appeared over the years that it is truly a gut-wrenching choice to decide which/who to highlight, but some do bubble to the fore. Two rather special, Special Issues and two current luminaries are worth particular note. The Special Issues focus on an area that our journal (and members) has long had a bond with: liver anatomy and function. Indeed, and as aside (promise, not too many more) our society's pater familias, Leidy (1848), long before becoming our nation's first major dinosaur expert, published arguably the first thorough comparative study on the liver, Researches into the Comparative Anatomy of the Liver (1848; told you he was a polymath!). His progeny obviously inherited some of his interests, producing many papers and two Special Issues we highlight here: the issues were shepherded by Albert Geerts of Vrieje Universiteit Brussels and by our own Associate Editor extraordinaire, and autonomic nervous system master, Jean-Pierre Timmermans of the Universiteit Antwerpen, both from the magnificent land of Belgium that due to its chocolates, frites, waffles, and beers (did we mention the beers?) needs healthy liver function. The first was a 2004 Special Issue focusing on the important, yet under-addressed, topic of the hepatic nervous system (Geerts, 2004); the second (with additional co-editor Hendrik Reynaert, also of the Vrieje Universiteit Brussels) focused upon hepatic circulation (Geerts et al., 2008). For the innervation SI, Timmermans and Geerts assembled a stimulating cadre of world experts to explore many of the questions relating to the autonomics of this system (often delving into questions of why this world, contra to much of the gut, has no intrinsic nervous system, an important question in many regards, including liver transplantation). Some of the noteworthy papers included those: on the neural connections of the hypothalamus and liver (Uyama et al., 2004); masterful overviews of the anatomy of the efferent hepatic nerves by McCuskey (2004) and sensory hepatic nerves by Berthoud (2004); and studies on the neural regulation of hepatic circadian rhythms by Shibata (2004), on neuroregulation of the neuroendocrine component of the liver by Roskams et al. (2004), and consequences of denervation for liver function in transplanted livers by Colle et al. (2004) to mention but some. For the second, hepatic circulation issue, an equally masterful group of hepatic vascular experts flowed together to offer state-of-the-art assessments. These included: Roskams and Desmet (2008) study on the embryology of extra- and intrahepatic bile ducts; Fasel (2008) insightful re-assessment of traditional liver compartmentalization; Ohtani and Ohtani (2008) detailed overview of lymph circulation in the liver; Reynaert et al.'s (2008) study on regulation of sinusoidal perfusion in portal hypertension; and Yang and Poon (2008) detailed study of vascular changes in hepatocellular carcinoma; to mention but a handful. Many fine GI scientists have had research from their laboratories, students, and colleagues find voice in the pages of The Anatomical Record. Two among these are GIants in the anatomical world and deserve special acknowledgments both for their most valuable scientific contributions and for publishing with us: Robert S. McCuskey of the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona and Michael D. Gershon of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Interestingly, both McCuskey and Gershon were Presidents of the AAA (maybe it is something they ate?) and AAA Henry Gray Award Recipients (our highest honor) and have had a major hand in growing and steering our association and its journals in the latter quarter of the 20th century. To say that they are revered among their anatomy progeny would be an understatement. McCuskey is a world-renowned liver expert, with specialization in vascular hepatology, and has published both with our journal and AAA sister journals, including: a (1966) dynamic and static study of hepatic arterioles and sphincters in our birth-mother, The American Journal of Anatomy; his elegant (McCuskey et al., 2003) study on hepatic microvascular development in relation to morphogenesis of hepatocellular plates in rats; and insightful scholarly reviews of the anatomy of efferent hepatic nerves (McCuskey, 2004) and hepatic microvascular system in health and response to toxicants (McCuskey, 2008); Couteur et al. (2008) examination on old age and its effects on hepatic sinusoids; and Farrell et al.'s (2008) study on microcirculation in fatty liver disease. Similarly, Gershon, a universally respected neurobiologist with special expertise on the enteric nervous system (see, e.g., Gershon, 1998) has often directed his science, and that of students and postdocs, to The Anatomical Record and our AAA sister journal, Developmental Dynamics. These include studies on: the formation of apical pseudopods by Nunez and Gershon (1978); the highly specific neuronal serotonin binding protein, by Bernd et al. (1979); abnormalities of smooth muscle and nerves in aganglionic bowel segments by Tennyson et al. (1986); immunocytochemical analysis of neurotransmitters in guinea pig myenteric plexus by Gary Mawe (himself a noted AAA award winner) and Mawe et al. (1989); colonization of bowel by neural crest-derived cells re-migrating from foregut backtransplanted to vagal or sacral regions of host embryos by Rothman et al. (1993); regional differences in neuron number in myenteric plexus of guinea pig small and large bowel by Karaosmanoglu et al. (1996); and suppression of migrating neural crest cell by Jacobs-Cohen et al. (2002), among others. JL's granddaughter was back on his lap, comfy and cozy and listening to more repetitive Baby Shark songs, when she uttered, “Pop, I hear sounds coming from your belly! Do you think it could be the Spanish Law…” “No,” JL snapped, “we discussed this. I didn't eat any lawyers” (although the idea gains possibility with every news cycle). “What could the sounds be then?” the ever-inquisitive future federal litigator probed? “Well, as I tried to explain before, inside my belly are lots of tubes and pipes and pockets that food moves through en route to becoming energy. As the food moves, different pieces of food push against each other and stretch the tubes and sometimes this creates sounds. Make sense?” said a nervous JL, still trying to reach her (where is HS when one needs help?) “So, your very, very big belly has all these pipes and sacs and switches and caves and things inside to make food become energy, plus it can make sounds when it wants?” JL's future Yale grad is catching on. “You know, Pop, sounds like your belly-world is a pretty interesting place!” And right she is. And as you will see from this Special Issue more and more is being uncovered daily about the extraordinary anatomy, embryology, evolution, physiology, and immunology of the gastrointestinal system. Accordingly, we at The Anatomical Record are most pleased to offer these new insights and hope you learn, and enjoy, as much from this fine science as we have.