Sha Yutong, Haensel Daniel, Gutierrez Guadalupe, Du Huijing, Dai Xing, Nie Qing
Department of Mathematics, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, United States of America. Co-first authors.
Phys Biol. 2019 Jan 18;16(2):021001. doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/aaf928.
The transition of epithelial cells into a mesenchymal state (epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition or EMT) is a highly dynamic process implicated in various biological processes. During EMT, cells do not necessarily exist in 'pure' epithelial or mesenchymal states. There are cells with mixed (or hybrid) features of the two, which are termed as the intermediate cell states (ICSs). While the exact functions of ICS remain elusive, together with EMT it appears to play important roles in embryogenesis, tissue development, and pathological processes such as cancer metastasis. Recent single cell experiments and advanced mathematical modeling have improved our capability in identifying ICS and provided a better understanding of ICS in development and disease. Here, we review the recent findings related to the ICS in/or EMT and highlight the challenges in the identification and functional characterization of ICS.
上皮细胞向间充质状态的转变（上皮-间充质转化或EMT）是一个高度动态的过程，涉及多种生物学过程。在EMT过程中，细胞不一定以“纯粹”的上皮或间充质状态存在。存在具有这两种细胞混合（或杂交）特征的细胞，这些细胞被称为中间细胞状态（ICSs）。虽然ICS的确切功能仍不清楚，但它与EMT一起似乎在胚胎发生、组织发育以及癌症转移等病理过程中发挥重要作用。最近的单细胞实验和先进的数学建模提高了我们识别ICS的能力，并使我们对ICS在发育和疾病中的理解更加深入。在这里，我们回顾了与ICS在EMT中相关的最新发现，并强调了ICS识别和功能表征方面的挑战。
