The gut wall, region by region

Blocks of the gut wall side by side, each cut through every layer: the oesophagus, with its thick squamous lining, submucosal glands and skeletal-to-smooth muscle; the gastro-oesophageal junction, where the squamous lining meets the stomach’s columnar mucosa at the Z-line; the body of the stomach, its pits and glands drawn cell by cell (surface mucous, mucous neck, parietal, chief and enteroendocrine cells) with a ruga and three muscle layers; and the colon, with straight crypts full of goblet cells and a taenia coli. The small intestine is the gut wall model.