Generation and Manipulation of Rat Intestinal Organoids

When using organoids to assess physiology and cell fate decisions, it is important to use a model that closely recapitulates in vivo contexts. Accordingly, patient-derived organoids are used for disease modeling, drug discovery, and personalized treatment screening. Mouse intestinal organoids are commonly utilized to understand aspects of both intestinal function/physiology and stem cell dynamics/fate decisions. However, in many disease contexts, rats are often preferred over mice as a model due to their greater physiological similarity to humans in terms of disease pathophysiology. The rat model has been limited by a lack of genetic tools available in vivo, and rat intestinal organoids have proven fragile and difficult to culture long-term. Here, we build upon previously published protocols to robustly generate rat intestinal organoids from the duodenum and jejunum. We provide an overview of several downstream applications utilizing rat intestinal organoids, including functional swelling assays, whole mount staining, the generation of 2D enteroid monolayers, and lentiviral transduction. The rat organoid model provides a practical solution to the need of the field for an in vitro model which retains physiological relevance to humans, can be quickly genetically manipulated, and is easily obtained without the barriers involved in procuring human intestinal organoids.