Vacuoles in mammals: a subcellular structure indispensable for early embryogenesis.

A vacuole is a membrane-bound subcellular structure involved in intracellular digestion. Instead of the large "vacuolar" organelles that are found in plants and fungi, animal cells possess lysosomes that are smaller in size and are enriched with hydrolytic enzymes similar to those found in the vacuoles. Large vacuolar structures are often observed in highly differentiated mammalian tissues such as embryonic visceral endoderm and absorbing epithelium. Vacuoles/lysosomes share a conserved mechanism of biogenesis, and they are at the terminal of the endocytic pathways, Recent genetic studies of the mammalian orthologs of Vam/Vps genes, which have essential functions for vacuole assembly, revealed that the dynamics of vacuoles/lysosomes are important for tissue differentiation and patterning through regulation of various molecular signaling events in mammals.