Diego V. Bohorquez

Journal Article Nature · September 2025 To coexist with its resident microorganisms, the host must have a sense to adjust its behaviour in response to them. In the intestine, a sense for nutrients transduced to the brain through neuroepithelial circuits guides appetitive choices1-5. However, a s ... Full text Link to item Cite

Great minds think alike: Glutamatergic signaling in the second brain.

Journal Article Neuron · April 2, 2025 The enteric nervous system is comprised of interconnected diverse cell types that control sensory and motor functions of the gut. In this issue of Neuron, Hamnett et al. demonstrate a novel role for distinct glutamatergic putative interneuron subtypes in c ... Full text Link to item Cite

Deciphering visceral instincts: a scientific quest to unravel food choices from molecules to mind.

Journal Article Genes Dev · October 16, 2024 The study of biological mechanisms, while crucial, cannot fully explain complex phenomena like the instinct to eat. The mind-body connection, as exemplified by the concept of "voodoo death," highlights the profound influence of belief and cultural context ... Full text Link to item Cite

Multifunctional microelectronic fibers enable wireless modulation of gut and brain neural circuits.

Journal Article Nat Biotechnol · June 2024 Progress in understanding brain-viscera interoceptive signaling is hindered by a dearth of implantable devices suitable for probing both brain and peripheral organ neurophysiology during behavior. Here we describe multifunctional neural interfaces that com ... Full text Link to item Cite

The neural basis of sugar preference.

Journal Article Nat Rev Neurosci · October 2022 When it comes to food, one tempting substance is sugar. Although sweetness is detected by the tongue, the desire to consume sugar arises from the gut. Even when sweet taste is impaired, animals can distinguish sugars from non-nutritive sweeteners guided by ... Full text Link to item Cite

The preference for sugar over sweetener depends on a gut sensor cell.

Journal Article Nat Neurosci · February 2022 Guided by gut sensory cues, humans and animals prefer nutritive sugars over non-caloric sweeteners, but how the gut steers such preferences remains unknown. In the intestine, neuropod cells synapse with vagal neurons to convey sugar stimuli to the brain wi ... Full text Link to item Cite

The nerve not taken.

Journal Article Cell Metab · March 2, 2021 Nutrients entering the gut influence our brains through uncharacterized circuits. In this issue of Cell Metabolism, Goldstein et al. (2021) show hypothalamic neurons responding, via distinct neural paths, to nutrients infused in different intestinal segmen ... Full text Link to item Cite

Viscera affectum anno: the gut beyond eating behaviours.

Journal Article Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol · February 2021 One of the most pleasurable, yet dangerous, activities of our daily life is eating. But once food has been swallowed, all we can do is to trust our gut. Several remarkable studies published in 2020 have expanded our knowledge on how the gut is intertwined ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neuropod Cells: The Emerging Biology of Gut-Brain Sensory Transduction.

Journal Article Annu Rev Neurosci · July 8, 2020 Guided by sight, scent, texture, and taste, animals ingest food. Once ingested, it is up to the gut to make sense of the food's nutritional value. Classic sensory systems rely on neuroepithelial circuits to convert stimuli into signals that guide behavior. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Gut Sensory Transduction

Chapter · January 1, 2020 Nutrient assimilation is essential for life and is regulated by a complex system that coordinates the ingestion, absorption, and digestion of food. Central to this process is the body’s ability to assess its nutritional needs and adjust food intake to meet ... Full text Cite

An intravital window to image the colon in real time.

Journal Article Nat Commun · December 11, 2019 Intravital microscopy is a powerful technique to observe dynamic processes with single-cell resolution in live animals. No intravital window has been developed for imaging the colon due to its anatomic location and motility, although the colon is a key org ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Neural Circuit for Gut-Induced Reward.

Journal Article Cell · October 18, 2018 Full text Link to item Cite

A Neural Circuit for Gut-Induced Reward.

Journal Article Cell · October 18, 2018 The gut is now recognized as a major regulator of motivational and emotional states. However, the relevant gut-brain neuronal circuitry remains unknown. We show that optical activation of gut-innervating vagal sensory neurons recapitulates the hallmark eff ... Full text Link to item Cite

A gut-brain neural circuit for nutrient sensory transduction.

Journal Article Science · September 21, 2018 The brain is thought to sense gut stimuli only via the passive release of hormones. This is because no connection has been described between the vagus and the putative gut epithelial sensor cell-the enteroendocrine cell. However, these electrically excitab ... Full text Link to item Cite

The now and then of gut-brain signaling.

Journal Article Brain Res · August 15, 2018 Since their very beginnings, animals had gut sensory epithelial cells. In one of the first multicellular animals, Trichoplax - a literal wandering gut - food sensing and feeding was coordinated by specialized ventral sensor cells. In mammals, including hum ... Full text Link to item Cite

Where the gut meets the brain.

Journal Article Brain Res · August 15, 2018 Full text Link to item Cite

You Are What You (First) Eat

Journal Article Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · August 13, 2018 As far back as we can remember, we eat. In fact, we eat before we can remember. Our first meal is amniotic fluid. We swallow it during the first trimester of gestation, and with that, we expose our gut to a universe of molecules. These early molecules have ... Full text Cite

The intestinal tuft cell nanostructure in 3D.

Journal Article Sci Rep · May 10, 2017 Once referred to as "peculiar," tuft cells are enigmatic epithelial cells. Here, we reasoned that future functional studies could be derived from a complete account of the tuft cell ultrastructure. We identified and documented the volumetric ultrastructure ... Full text Link to item Cite

Correlative Confocal and 3D Electron Microscopy of a Specific Sensory Cell.

Journal Article J Vis Exp · July 19, 2015 Delineation of a cell's ultrastructure is important for understanding its function. This can be a daunting project for rare cell types diffused throughout tissues made of diverse cell types, such as enteroendocrine cells of the intestinal epithelium. These ... Full text Link to item Cite

The gut connectome: making sense of what you eat.

Journal Article J Clin Invest · March 2, 2015 The enteric nervous system has been studied thus far as an isolated unit. As researchers probe deeper into the function of this system, it is evident that the neural network stretches beyond enteric neurons. It is formed by both intrinsic and extrinsic neu ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neuroepithelial circuit formed by innervation of sensory enteroendocrine cells.

Journal Article J Clin Invest · February 2015 Satiety and other core physiological functions are modulated by sensory signals arising from the surface of the gut. Luminal nutrients and bacteria stimulate epithelial biosensors called enteroendocrine cells. Despite being electrically excitable, enteroen ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

An enteroendocrine cell-enteric glia connection revealed by 3D electron microscopy.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2014 The enteroendocrine cell is the cornerstone of gastrointestinal chemosensation. In the intestine and colon, this cell is stimulated by nutrients, tastants that elicit the perception of flavor, and bacterial by-products; and in response, the cell secretes h ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Axon-like basal processes in enteroendocrine cells: characteristics and potential targets.

Journal Article Clin Transl Sci · October 2011 Enteroendocrine cells (EECs) play a key role in nutrient digestion and absorption, and are essential for normal life. Recently, EEC function has received considerable attention because several gastrointestinal hormones modulate insulin secretion and food i ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ultrastructural development of the small intestinal mucosa in the embryo and turkey poult: A light and electron microscopy study.

Journal Article Poult Sci · April 2011 The potential for growth and feed efficiency in turkey poults directly correlates with the early development of the intestinal epithelium. Although the metabolic aspects of enteric maturation have been studied, little is known about the ultrastructural dev ... Full text Link to item Cite

Characterization of basal pseudopod-like processes in ileal and colonic PYY cells.

Journal Article J Mol Histol · February 2011 The peptide tyrosine tyrosine (PYY) is produced and secreted from L cells of the gastrointestinal mucosa. To study the anatomy and function of PYY-secreting L cells, we developed a transgenic PYY-green fluorescent protein mouse model. PYY-containing cells ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite