Spatial dynamics of intestinal homeostasis

The intestinal epithelium is constantly renewing itself, generating all its different cell types from a dedicated pool of stem cells. These stem cells are located at the bottom of so-called crypts, invaginations lying in between the villi, the finger-like protrusions into the intestinal cavity. The villi are where cells after migrating out of the crypts will die. Cells within intestinal epithelium thus have to coordinate changes in cell type with changes in position, with respect to the crypt-villus axis as well as with respect to their direct neighbors to maintain both global and finer scale patterns. How cells achieve this coordination is not yet understood. In this thesis, live tracking of cells in organoids (3D structures grown from stem cells) is used to investigate the relationship between cell fate and cell movement.