This facilitates transport of numerous small molecules into the enterocyte from the intestinal lumen.

These include broken down proteins, fats, and sugars, as well as water, electrolytes, vitamins, and bile salts.

Enterocytes also have an endocrine role, secreting hormones such as leptin.

The major functions of enterocytes include:[1] Intestinal stem cell aging has been studied in Drosophila as a model for understanding the biology of stem cell/niche aging.

[4] Using knockdown mutants defective in various genes that function in the DNA damage response in enterocytes, it was shown that deficiency in the DNA damage response accelerates intestinal stem cell aging, thus providing a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of this aging process.