In this simulation, you will help treat an infant who is experiencing diarrhea, and as a consequence, is not gaining weight. She also has elevated blood sodium concentration and glucose in her feces and urine. Dr. Shaw, your supervisor, suspects that her diarrhea is caused by a lack of ability to absorb glucose. In this simulation, you will use a mouse model to study glucose transport and see if data from animal studies can be used to diagnose human diseases.

Make an everted sac

You will use a piece of mouse intestine as your model to study glucose transport between the inner (mucosal) and outer (serosal) sides. To make sure no impurities interfere with your results, you will need to turn it inside out, which you will do via an interactive animation. At the end of the everting procedure, the intestine looks like a sausage!

Study glucose transport by measuring its concentration

Once you have your everted intestinal sac, you will expose both sides to glucose solutions of different concentrations, a sodium-potassium ATPase blocker and a sodium-free saline solution. Then, after measuring the glucose levels on both sides following the treatments, you will analyze your data and be able to understand how active glucose transport in the intestinal epithelium works. A step-by-step interactive summary diagram will help you visualize what happens to all the molecules and transporters involved.

Help diagnose the infant

Once you know how intestinal active glucose transport works and what molecules are involved, you will call Dr. Shaw so that she can confirm your diagnosis and try to treat her little patient.

Will your findings be able to help make the infant well again?