According to current dogma, there is little or no ongoing neurogenesis in the fully developed adult enteric nervous system. This lack of neurogenesis leaves unanswered the question of how enteric neuronal populations are maintained in adult guts, given previous reports of ongoing neuronal death. Here, we confirm that despite ongoing neuronal cell loss because of apoptosis in the myenteric ganglia of the adult small intestine, total myenteric neuronal numbers remain constant. This observed neuronal homeostasis is maintained by new neurons formed in vivo from dividing precursor cells that are located within myenteric ganglia and express both Nestin and p75NTR, but not the pan-glial marker Sox10. Mutation of the phosphatase and tensin homolog gene in this pool of adult precursors leads to an increase in enteric neuronal number, resulting in ganglioneuromatosis, modeling the corresponding disorder in humans. Taken together, our results show significant turnover and neurogenesis of adult enteric neurons and provide a paradigm for understanding the enteric nervous system in health and disease.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 88. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 May 2025.
All research outputs
#618,762
of 34,559,526 outputs
Outputs from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
#9,853
of 119,174 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#9,588
of 355,275 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
#166
of 901 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,559,526 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 119,174 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 355,275 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 901 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.
