A focus on parietal cells as a renewing cell population

Figure 1 Diagrammatic representation of the gastric unit or gland. It is composed of 4 regions: pit, isthmus, neck and base and populated by a heterogeneous population of cell types. Pit, parietal and neck cells originate in the isthmus from stem (granule-free) cells and their immediate descendants (prepit, preparietal and preneck cells). Neck cells are not end cells and therefore, at the neck-base border, they transform into zymogenic cells.