MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London, London, UK.
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Bioessays. 2017 Sep;39(9). doi: 10.1002/bies.201700058. Epub 2017 Jul 28.
The maintenance of cell size homeostasis has been studied for years in different cellular systems. With the focus on 'what regulates cell size', the question 'why cell size needs to be maintained' has been largely overlooked. Recent evidence indicates that animal cells exhibit nonlinear cell size dependent growth rates and mitochondrial metabolism, which are maximal in intermediate sized cells within each cell population. Increases in intracellular distances and changes in the relative cell surface area impose biophysical limitations on cells, which can explain why growth and metabolic rates are maximal in a specific cell size range. Consistently, aberrant increases in cell size, for example through polyploidy, are typically disadvantageous to cellular metabolism, fitness and functionality. Accordingly, cellular hypertrophy can potentially predispose to or worsen metabolic diseases. We propose that cell size control may have emerged as a guardian of cellular fitness and metabolic activity.
细胞大小稳态的维持在不同的细胞系统中已经研究了多年。研究的重点是“什么调节细胞大小”，而“为什么细胞大小需要维持”这个问题在很大程度上被忽视了。最近的证据表明，动物细胞表现出非线性的细胞大小依赖性生长率和线粒体代谢，在每个细胞群体中，中等大小的细胞中代谢率最高。细胞内距离的增加和相对细胞表面积的变化对细胞施加了生物物理限制，这可以解释为什么生长和代谢率在特定的细胞大小范围内达到最大值。一致地，细胞大小的异常增加，例如通过多倍体化，通常对细胞代谢、适应性和功能不利。因此，细胞肥大可能潜在地导致或恶化代谢疾病。我们提出，细胞大小控制可能已经成为细胞适应性和代谢活性的守护者。
