Cooperative motor control of the pyloric junction by myogenic and neuronal mechanisms

胃和小肠交界处的协调肌肉运动是控制胃内容物进入肠道进一步消化的速度的基本机制。肌肉的运动决定了胃以最佳的速度排空，并防止肠道内容物反流到胃。这种协调的失败很可能与各种临床情况有关，包括胃排空加速或延迟。到目前为止，关于神经、肌肉和起搏细胞在这种协调运动中的相互作用的信息很少。在这个项目中，我们将研究神经、肌肉和起搏细胞如何协同工作来控制这种协调运动。我们将在细胞和器官水平上研究这种机制，并试图建立肌肉运动的模式及其在胃和小肠之间的协调。神经和起搏细胞之间的相互作用将在这些研究中得到表征。我们的工作将为这一活动提供结构性证据。它包括识别连接小肠和胃的神经通路，以及确定起搏细胞网络是统一的、连续的、不连续的还是跨越交界处的过渡结构。这些研究将揭示起搏细胞介导的活动与这些细胞在每个交界区的密度之间的相关性。我们还将确定交界处传播活动的差异是由于用于信号传导的细胞数量的差异还是由于细胞之间的电连接的差异。这项研究将加深我们对神经、肌肉和起搏细胞在这一连接中如何协同工作的认识，这是进一步临床研究相关疾病的重要一步。

The coordinated muscle movement in the junction between the stomach and small intestine is an essential mechanism for controlling the speed of gastric content moving into the intestine for further digestion. The muscle movement determines the gastric emptying at an optimal rate and prevents intestinal contents reflux to the stomach. Failure of this coordination is likely to be involved in a variety of clinical conditions including accelerated or delayed gastric emptying. Up to date, little information is available about the interaction between nerve, muscle and pacemaker cells during this coordinated movement. In this project, we will investigate how the nerve, muscle and pacemaker cells work together to control this coordinated movement. We will study this mechanism at both cellular and organ levels and try to establish the patterns of muscle movement and their coordination between the stomach and the small intestine. The interaction between the nerve and pacemaker cells will be characterised in these studies. Our work will provide structural evidence for this activity. It includes identification of the nerve pathways connecting between the small intestine and stomach and determination of whether the pacemaker cell network is an uniform continuous or a discontinuous or a transitional structure across the junction. These studies will reveal the correlation between pacemaker cell mediated activity and the density of these cells in each junctional region. We will also determine whether the difference in propagation activity across the junction is due to differences in the number of cells for signal conduction or electrical connections between the cells. This study will advance our knowledge for understanding how the nerve, muscle and pacemaker cells work in concert in this junction, which is an important step for further clinical investigation of related disease.