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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

Using Human Intestinal Organoids to Understand the Small Intestine Epithelium at the Single Cell Transcriptional Level
Published on: June 28, 2024
Multiscale integration of tissue and chromatin context converts cell heterogeneity into stable intestinal patterning
Cornelia Schwayer1, Silvia Barbiero2, David B Brückner3
1Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, 4056 Basel, Switzerland; ETH Zürich, Department for Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE), 4056 Basel, Switzerland.
None:
Tissue regeneration requires de novo patterning, which has been proposed to be facilitated by cellular heterogeneity. Yet how such heterogeneities are integrated with the mechanochemical state of the tissue and stabilized at the chromatin level into stable, spatially organized fates remains poorly understood. Using in vivo mouse intestinal regeneration models and organoids, we identify a critical density regime that produces a permissive window for heterogeneity in the mechanosensor Yes-associated protein 1 (YAP1). We show that YAP1 heterogeneity is coupled to lineage-biased chromatin accessibility and is decoded through FOXA1, which integrates the permissive chromatin state to Delta-Notch supracellular feedback and lineage commitment. This circuit generates fate bistability and preserves a memory of transient YAP1 activity, thereby maintaining spatial patterning as tissues return to homeostasis after injury. Together, our findings establish a multiscale framework in which tissue-scale mechanics tune single-cell competence and, through FOXA1-mediated bistability, convert transient heterogeneity into stable and self-organized tissue architecture.
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