CrossTalk opposing view: Interstitial cells are not involved and physiologically important in neuromuscular transmission in the gut

In the gut, smooth muscle bundles are separated by intramuscular spaces containing nerve fibres and interstitial cells including intramuscular interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC-IM), a subset of a family of ICC (Komuro 2006). Traditionally, smooth muscle cells (SMCs) are believed to transduce the action of neurotransmitters that cause muscle contraction or relaxation by a process called direct neuromuscular transmission (NMT). Neuro-ICC-IM and neuro-smooth muscle (SM) transmissions regulate functions of ICC and SMCs, respectively. Initially proposed by Imaizumi & Hanna (1969), Sanders and colleagues championed the idea that the smooth muscle responses to nerve stimulation required mandatory transduction by the ICC-IM (indirect NMT) (Burns et al. 1996; Ward et al. 2000). The role of the smooth muscles was considered simply to mount mechanical contraction or relaxation in response to electrical signals transduced in ICC-IM. It has also been suggested that both ICC-IM and SMCs transduced neural signals to the smooth muscle. According to one view, ICC-IM is involved only in certain situations (direct or indirect NMT) (Bhetwal et al. 2013; Klein et al. 2013). According to another, ICC-IM is involved in parallel with smooth muscles (direct and indirect NMT) (Groneberg et al. 2013). However, most of the available data continue to support the traditional view of