Estimation of the extent of the cutoff region from the spatial distribution of labelling and mitotic indices of intestinal crypts of a fixed length

Current understanding of the pattern of proliferation within intestinal crypts involves the notion of a cutoff region introduced by Cairnie et al. (Exp. Cell. Res. 39, 539-553, 1965b). (Cells produced above the cutoff are non-cycling, whereas cells produced below the cutoff are cycling.) They contrasted the predicted distribution of proliferation in the extreme cases of a cutoff of width 0 (a sharp cutoff) with one eight cells wide (a slow cutoff) and concluded that the data were better explained by the latter. We have shown that crypt size variation artificially broadens the apparent distribution of proliferating cells in the crypt (Totafurno et al., Biophys. J. 54, 845-858, 1988). Here we show that the measurement and analysis of crypts of a specified height reduces this artifact. This work introduces the use of distance from the crypt base (in microns) to specify the location of cells within the crypt as an improvement over the cell position ordering traditionally used in the determination of the distribution of proliferating cells. We also show how to explicitly correct for several artifacts in the measurement of the labelling index. We conclude that cell proliferation within the crypt is more localized than previously realized; in fact, a cutoff as slow as eight cells wide is rejected.