HOW DO EPITHELIAL CELLS WORK?

Finding out how cells adopt specific shapes and organize themselves into tissues and organs in multicellular organisms is one of the most exciting questions in modern biology with profound implications for human health.

Epithelial cells are sheets of cells which form the compartments of many organs such as skin, gut, liver, kidney or the retina. Cell polarity is a key feature of simple and more complex epithelial cells such as photoreceptor cells. The polar organization of these cells is fundamental to their anatomy and physiology and an area of intense research in current cell biology. Our aim is to better understand both the cellular and molecular mechanisms that control the polarity of epithelial cells and the cell adhesion between epithelial cells that binds cells into tissues.