title: Taming the tiger of tissue aggregation: how epithelia control structural assembly of underlying cells.
abstract: A recent paper by Ninomiya and Winklbauer explores the role of the epithelium in restricting the natural capacity of mesenchymal cells to form amorphous aggregates. They propose the epithelium controls mesoderm adhesion, thereby ensuring that embryos and, by extension, adults are not multilayered balls of cells, but are instead elongate with a linearly segmented architecture.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. lad43@pitt.edu
authors.forename: Lance A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Davidson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001001:Anura / Q000196:embryology; D002449:Cell Aggregation; D016764:Cell Polarity; D004707:Endoderm / Q000166:cytology; D004848:Epithelium / Q000378:metabolism*; D008648:Mesoderm / Q000166:cytology*