Abstract
In an editorial of the last issue of Gastroenterology, Montgomery and Shivdasani comment on the known markers of mammalian intestinal epithelial stem cells. We wish to caution that staining for doublecortin and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase-like-1 (DCAMKL-1), one of the putative stem cell markers mentioned in this editorial, is a highly specific and robust marker of postmitotic, differentiated, tuft cells, a minority cell lineage of the intestinal epithelium, rather than a marker for intestinal epithelial stem cells. This is important since candidate markers of intestinal stem cell are scarce and DCAMKL-1 might be especially attractive to researchers because of the availability of good antibodies, which is not the case for other, functionally validated, markers, such as Lgr5.