Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-2200, USA.
BMC Biol. 2011 Aug 31;9:57. doi: 10.1186/1741-7007-9-57.
Cells are highly complex and orderly machines, with defined shapes and a startling variety of internal organizations. Complex geometry is a feature of both free-living unicellular organisms and cells inside multicellular animals. Where does the geometry of a cell come from? Many of the same questions that arise in developmental biology can also be asked of cells, but in most cases we do not know the answers. How much of cellular organization is dictated by global cell polarity cues as opposed to local interactions between cellular components? Does cellular structure persist across cell generations? What is the relationship between cell geometry and tissue organization? What ensures that intracellular structures are scaled to the overall size of the cell? Cell biology is only now beginning to come to grips with these questions.
细胞是高度复杂且有序的机器，具有明确的形状和惊人的内部组织结构多样性。复杂的几何形状是自由生活的单细胞生物和多细胞动物内细胞的共同特征。那么，细胞的几何形状是从何而来的呢？在发育生物学中出现的许多问题同样也可以在细胞中提出，但在大多数情况下，我们并不知道答案。细胞的整体极性线索决定了多少组织，而不是细胞成分之间的局部相互作用？细胞结构是否在细胞世代之间持续存在？细胞几何形状和组织结构之间的关系是什么？如何确保细胞内结构与细胞的整体大小成比例？细胞生物学现在才开始着手解决这些问题。
