Development of the submucous plexus in the large intestine of the mouse

In the small intestine of both embryonic birds and mammals, neuron precursors aggregrate first at the site of the myenteric plexus, and the submucous plexus develops later. However, in the large intestine of birds, the submucosal region is colonised by neural-crest-derived cells before the myenteric region (Burns and Le Douarin, Development 125:4335-4347, 1998). Using antisera that recognize undifferentiated neural-crest-derived cells (p75NTR) and differentiated neurons (PGP9.5), we examined the colonisation of the murine large intestine by neural-crest-derived cells and the development of the myenteric and submucosal plexuses. At E12.5, when the neural crest cells were migrating through and colonising the hindgut, the hindgut mesenchyme was largely undifferentiated, and a circular muscle layer could not be discerned. Neural-crest-derived cells migrated through, and settled in, the outer half of the mesenchyme. By E14.5, neural-crest-derived cells had colonised the entire hindgut; at this stage the circular muscle layer had started to differentiate. From E14.5 to E16.5, p75NTR- and PGP9.5-positive cells were observed on the serosal side of the circular muscle, in the myenteric region, but not in the submucosal region. Scattered, single neurons were first observed in the submucosal region around E18.5, and groups of neurons forming ganglia were not observed until after birth. The development of the enteric plexuses in the murine large intestine therefore differs from that in the avian large intestine.