We normally think of the digestive system as a long tube where food goes in, nutrients are absorbed and waste comes out the other end as… well we don’t really like to think about that! That’s true but the digestive system is able to do all this through a complex set of behaviours. My primary research requires carrying out experiments to understand how different nutrients regulate movement or “motility” within the digestive system of the guinea pig or mouse.

My research involves studying motility in isolation “in vitro” using a technique called video-imaging. This involves carefully dissecting a segment of intestine and keeping it alive at physiological conditions in an organ bath. The intestine moves by contracting rings of smooth muscle and we take videos of these movements, which are processed using special software to create spatiotemporal (ST) maps.

ST maps are colourful and accurate representations of intestinal movements that can be analysed precisely. A change in gut diameter when the intestine is actively moving (a contraction) is seen as yellow-red bands on a background of blue-green (when the tissue is relaxed). These contractions can run across the length of the map (x-axis- distance in mm) over the recording period (y axis- time in sec).

We can manipulate these patterns of motility to study the effects of a meal by adding different nutrients such as fats or glucose inside the intestinal lumen. We can also study various models of disease to investigate abnormal motility patterns and explore the potential for therapy with pharmacological interventions.