Nutritional factors and immune functions of gut epithelium

The intestinal epithelium acts as a barrier to the external environment contained within the lumen of the gut. It also transports solutes for nutrition and for immunological surveillance. The present review develops the hypothesis that changes in diet, through the composition of the lumen environment, alter the expression of genes in the epithelium. These genes include those that encode for proteins that signal to the mucosal immune system. Directly changing the expression of signalling molecules in the intestinal epithelium using transgenic techniques alters immune function. For example, up regulation of the chemokine macrophage inflammatory protein-2 increases neutrophil recruitment. Furthermore, lumen molecules such as short-chain fatty acids regulate chemokine expression by epithelial cells. By this means, the epithelium acts as a transducing monolayer signalling between the contents of the intestine and the mucosal immune system.