Extracellular matrices as elastic scaffold and mechanical interaction.
Development of spatial pattern and form is one of the central issues in embryology and is included under the general name of morphogenesis. Recently, many investigations have revealed how does development occurs by each embryonic stem cell or which Genes play a crucial role for morphogenesis. However, still fundamental question is unclear; such as how does each cell recognize spatial information or which kind of information guides each cell to the suitable place. Approximately, we have 6x10(13) cells in our body. If each frame of reference of each cell is included in the gene, gene must have included more than 6x10(13) of information to inform each cell where they are. We could simply suggest this kind of the idea is quite wrong because we know genes are few enough to include such informations. Recently, it has been suggested that interaction between intracellular and extracellular fiber play crucial roll for morphogenesis. The fibers inside cell are quite complicated but well organized the system, and fibers outside of the cell are comparatively very simple fiber. Each of the fibers is well studied, but quantitative investigation of their interaction is lacking although importance is suggested by many researchers. A major problem is lacking of new method or technique. In our topics, we would like to introduce how intracellular and extracellular fiber generate morphogenesis and how we could investigate them using new technique for tissue engineering, one of the promising field of applied cell biology.
Harada
Ichiro
I
Dept. Biomolecular Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Akaike
Toshihiro
T
D002448:Cell Adhesion / Q000502:physiology*; D002465:Cell Movement / Q000502:physiology; D002468:Cell Physiological Phenomena; D003094:Collagen; D005109:Extracellular Matrix / Q000502:physiology* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D040542:Mechanotransduction, Cellular / Q000502:physiology*; D009024:Morphogenesis
D003094:Collagen