Large intestine Kids Encyclopedia

Large intestine
Front of abdomen, showing the large intestine, with the stomach and small intestine in gray outline.
Front of abdomen, showing surface markings for liver (red), and the stomach and large intestine (blue)
Latin	intestinum crassum
Gray's	subject #249 1177
Artery	Superior mesenteric, Inferior mesenteric and Iliac arteries
Lymph	inferior mesenteric lymph nodes
Dorlands/Elsevier	Large intestine

The large intestine is also called the colon or large bowel. It connects the small intestine to the rectum and anus. It is about 1.5 meters long or 5 feet. It is shorter than the small intestine, but its diameter is larger.

Water is absorbed here and the remaining waste material is stored as faeces before being removed by defecation.

Images

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  Colonic crypts (intestinal glands) within four tissue sections. The cells have been stained to show a brown-orange color if the cells produce the mitochondrial protein cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (CCOI), and the nuclei of the cells (located at the outer edges of the cells lining the walls of the crypts) are stained blue-gray with haematoxylin. Panels A, B were cut across the long axes of the crypts and panels C, D were cut parallel to the long axes of the crypts. In panel A the bar shows 100 µm and allows an estimate of the frequency of crypts in the colonic epithelium. Panel B includes three crypts in cross-section, each with one segment deficient for CCOI expression and at least one crypt, on the right side, undergoing fission into two crypts. Panel C shows, on the left side, a crypt fissioning into two crypts. Panel D shows typical small clusters of two and three CCOI deficient crypts (the bar shows 50 µm). The images were made from original photomicrographs, but panels A, B and D were also included in an article and illustrations were published with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License allowing re-use.

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  Histological section.

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  Intestines