Polarity complexes in cellular differentiation

生物学中的一个关键问题是细胞如何形成极性。确定极性的建立对细胞的功能是重要的。例如，皮肤细胞（称为上皮细胞）有一面暴露于外部环境，另一面与内部环境接触。细胞的每一侧都需要执行不同的功能，这就需要将不同的细胞成分定位和富集到细胞的一侧或另一侧。越来越明显的是，一组统称为极性蛋白的蛋白质参与了这一过程。这些蛋白质中的许多在不同的生物体中是保守的。尽管有这些知识，但我们对这些极性蛋白在细胞中的作用知之甚少。我们的实验室利用一种方法来识别与已知极性蛋白质相互作用的新蛋白质或蛋白质复合物。这为我们了解这些极性复合物的本质，以及它们如何相互作用以控制细胞极性提供了重要的见解。总之，这种方法为我们提供了关于我们身体中不同类型的细胞如何发展以执行特定功能的基本知识。

A critical issue in biology is how a cell establishes polarity. The establishment of a defined polarity is important for the function of a cell. For example, a skin cell (known as an epithelial cell) has one side exposed to the external environment and another side in contact with the internal environment. Each side of the cell needs to perform separate functions which requires the localization, and enrichment, of different cellular components to one side of the cell or another. Increasingly, it is evident that a set of proteins collectively known as polarity proteins, are involved in this process. Many of these proteins are conserved across different organisms. Despite this knowledge, we have little understanding of how these polarity proteins function in the cell. Our laboratory utilizes an approach to identify novel proteins, or proteins complexes, that interact with the known polarity proteins. This provides us with important insights into the nature of these polarity complexes, and how they interact with one another to control cellular polarity. Together this approach provides us with fundamental knowledge of how different cell types in our body develop to perform specific functions.