Question

Why does the intestinal mucosa have microvilli?

Answer 1

The intestinal mucosa is present at the inner lining of the intestinal tract and maintains close proximity with commensal microbes which reside in the intestinal lumen. Microvilli is said to have an important role in the human digestive system.

Complete answer:
- The tiny projections/finger-like structures on the inner surface of the small intestine which helps in absorbing the digested food are called villi. These help to increase the surface area of intestinal walls.
- These are detected in the inner walls of the small intestine. Microvilli make a polymorphic class of surface protuberances that are regularly packed in some tissues and loosely positioned in oth­ers. Microvilli, in the most simple terms, are tiny small microscopic projections that exist in, on, and around cells.
- They can exist on their own or in conjunction with villi.
- Microvilli function is to increase the surface area of the small intestinal wall for the absorption of the digested food.
- Villi are filled with many blood vessels. These vessels help in the digested food adsorption process and transfer it to the bloodstream.

Note: Microvilli is microscopic and can only be seen with a very powerful resolution microscope. They give the cell surface a wooly appearance because there are so many of them. This fuzzy/wooly appearance guides some anatomists to refer to microvilli as a brush border because the structure looks like the bristles of a paintbrush. So, we can see, the brush border can be explained as the microvilli-covered surface of the simple epithelium cells of the small intestine.