Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla (IBiS), Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocío/CSIC/Universidad de Sevilla and Departamento de Biología Celular, Universidad de Sevilla, 41013 Seville, Spain.
Biomedical Network Research Centre on Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), 28031 Madrid, Spain.
Development. 2021 Jan 6;148(1):dev195669. doi: 10.1242/dev.195669.
Understanding the cellular organization of tissues is key to developmental biology. In order to deal with this complex problem, researchers have taken advantage of reductionist approaches to reveal fundamental morphogenetic mechanisms and quantitative laws. For epithelia, their two-dimensional representation as polygonal tessellations has proved successful for understanding tissue organization. Yet, epithelial tissues bend and fold to shape organs in three dimensions. In this context, epithelial cells are too often simplified as prismatic blocks with a limited plasticity. However, there is increasing evidence that a realistic approach, even from a reductionist perspective, must include apico-basal intercalations (i.e. scutoidal cell shapes) for explaining epithelial organization convincingly. Here, we present an historical perspective about the tissue organization problem. Specifically, we analyze past and recent breakthroughs, and discuss how and why simplified, but realistic, models require scutoidal features to address key morphogenetic events.
理解组织的细胞结构是发育生物学的关键。为了解决这个复杂的问题，研究人员利用还原论的方法来揭示基本的形态发生机制和定量规律。对于上皮组织，它们的二维表示为多边形镶嵌已经被证明对于理解组织的组织是成功的。然而，上皮组织弯曲和折叠以形成三维器官。在这种情况下，上皮细胞往往被简化为具有有限可塑性的棱柱块。然而，越来越多的证据表明，即使从还原论的角度来看，一个现实的方法也必须包括顶端-基底的插入（即盾状细胞形状），以便令人信服地解释上皮组织的组织。在这里，我们提出了一个关于组织组织问题的历史视角。具体来说，我们分析了过去和最近的突破，并讨论了简化但现实的模型如何以及为什么需要盾状特征来解决关键的形态发生事件。
