More-recent studies using the rat NEC model have identified mechanisms underlying intestinal barrier dysfunction (Ares et al., 2019), the protective effects of the hormone ghrelin (Meister et al., 2019), thrombomodulin (Li et al., 2019a) and fecal microbiota transplantation (Prado et al., 2019), and the deficiency of intestinal alkaline phosphatase that occurs in experimental NEC (Rentea et al., 2019), a finding that is also seen in human disease (Heath et al., 2019). The gene discussed is GHRL; the disease is necrotizing enterocolitis.