Sundaram Meera V, Cohen Jennifer D
Dept. of Genetics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Dept. of Genetics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Semin Cell Dev Biol. 2017 Jul;67:123-131. doi: 10.1016/j.semcdb.2016.05.006. Epub 2016 May 10.
A seamless tube is a very narrow-bore tube that is composed of a single cell with an intracellular lumen and no adherens or tight junctions along its length. Many capillaries in the vertebrate vascular system are seamless tubes. Seamless tubes also are found in invertebrate organs, including the Drosophila trachea and the Caenorhabditis elegans excretory system. Seamless tube cells can be less than a micron in diameter, and they can adopt very simple "doughnut-like" shapes or very complex, branched shapes comparable to those of neurons. The unusual topology and varied shapes of seamless tubes raise many basic cell biological questions about how cells form and maintain such structures. The prevalence of seamless tubes in the vascular system means that answering such questions has significant relevance to human health. In this review, we describe selected examples of seamless tubes in animals and discuss current models for how seamless tubes develop and are shaped, focusing particularly on insights that have come from recent studies in Drosophila and C. elegans.
无缝管是一种非常细的管，由单个细胞组成，具有细胞内管腔，并且在其长度上没有黏着连接或紧密连接。脊椎动物血管系统中的许多毛细血管都是无缝管。无缝管也存在于无脊椎动物器官中，包括果蝇气管和秀丽隐杆线虫排泄系统。无缝管细胞的直径可以小于一微米，它们可以呈现非常简单的“甜甜圈状”形状，也可以呈现与神经元相当的非常复杂的分支形状。无缝管不同寻常的拓扑结构和多样的形状引发了许多关于细胞如何形成和维持此类结构的基础细胞生物学问题。无缝管在血管系统中的普遍存在意味着回答这些问题与人类健康密切相关。在这篇综述中，我们描述了动物中无缝管的选定实例，并讨论了无缝管如何发育和形成形状的当前模型，特别关注来自果蝇和秀丽隐杆线虫近期研究的见解。
