Summary
Whole-mount preparations of the submucosa were made from the small intestine of rats, guinea-pigs, rabbits and sheep. In the distended intestine the collagen fibres ran straight and approximately parallel to the serosal surface. They formed a characteristic lattice, with two arrays of fibres running diagonally in a clockwise and an anticlockwise direction, and making an angle of 50°–55° with the longitudinal axis of the intestine. This collagenfibre lattice was flexible and changed with the movements of the intestinal wall; when the radial distension predominated, the angle between collagen fibres of the submucosa and longitudinal axis of the intestine increased to 60°–65°, and when the longitudinal distension predominated the angle decreased to about 30°.
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Gabella, G. The cross-ply arrangement of collagen fibres in the submucosa of the mammalian small intestine. Cell Tissue Res. 248, 491–497 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00216474
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00216474