3.7 - 3.9 Integrating cells into tissues Flashcards
What are tissues?
Cells in most multicellualr organisms are arranged into tissues. Tissues are cooperative assemblies of cells and the extracellular matrix
What are organs?
Cooperative assemblies of tissues
What are the 5 major types of tissue?
- Epithelial
- Connective
- Nervous
- Muscle
- Blood and lymphoid tissues
What are the key characteristics of epithelial tissue?
- Cells intimately connected to each other (junctions)
- Apico-basal polarity
- Little extracellular matrix (basement membrane)
What are the key characteristics of connective tissue?
- Cells have few contacts with each other
- No apico-basal polarity
- Large amount of extra cellular matrix
What is nervous tissue?
Specialised, electrochemical signalling
What is muscle tissue?
Specialised, contractile
How are all tissue types seen in an organ such as the gut?
What do the epithelia line?
- External body surfaces
- Internal body cavities
- Tube organs that communicate with exterior (alimentary, genito-urinary and respiratory tracts)
What does the epithelia form?
- Secretory parts of glands and their ducts
- Receptors for centain sensory organs
- Even the brain arises from an epithelium (neuroectoderm) in the embryo
Name these epithelia
What are the functions of the epithelia?
- Protection from mechanical and environmental insults
- Lining of internal tube organs (oviduct and respiratory tracts)
- Example: respiratory epithelium line air conducting tubes to lungs (infection risk)
- Secrete mucus
- Cell specialisation
- Cilia
- Goblet cells
How is a thick keratinised layer produced in the epidermis?
- Epidermis starts as a stem cell on the basal laminar
- Proliferates and differentiate to form keratinocytes that produce keratin and intermediate filaments
- Modified cell death where they lose their nucleus and are just bags of keratin protein
What happens in the respiratory epithelium if there is a genetic defect of cilia?
- Genetic defect of cilia in dynein genes stops them from beating, as dynein are responsible for movement
- Results in primary ciliary dyskinesia
- Situs inversus, male infertility
- Recurrent respiratory disease in children
What happens to the respiratory epithelium if there is a genetic defect of chloride channel?
- Abnormal export from the ER
- Causes cystic fibrosis
- Mucus so thick that cilia can’t move it
What is the function of epithelia in the organs (intestine)?
- Absorption from lumen of organs (intestinal tract and kidney tubules)
- In the intestine there are villi
- Further membrane specialisations in the microvilli (brush border)
- Protect epithelium from acids by secreting mucus
What is the polarity of the gut epithelium which absorbs nutrient molecules?
- It has apico-basal polarity and apical and basal membrane have different properties
- Apical has active transport channel where there is increased glucose concentration in the cell
- Basal has passive channel and transporter protein for diffusion of glucose to the blood
- There are special cell-cell junctions that prevent backflow of molecules
How do the apical and basal membranes differ?
- Apical is for absorption, secretion, specialisations (microvilli and cilia)
- Basal is for adhesion to extracellular matrix and secretion into sub mucosa
What are the four different types of junctions for epithelial cells?
- Tight junctions
- Adherens junctions (desmosomes)
- Gap juncitons
- Focal contacts (hemidesmosomes)
How are cell junctions in epithelial cells usually aranged?
- Cells may have more than one type of junction
- Arranged in junctional complexes
What are tight junctions?
- Usually near the apical surface
- They are bands of plasma membrane proteins encircling the cell
- Prevent leakage of molecules across the epithelium
- Separate different membrane domains of epithelium, essential to maintain cell apico-basal polarity
What is the structure of tight junctions?
- Bands of membrane proteins, claudin and occludin, in adjoining cells
- Proteins form very strong links, non covalent hydrogen bonds
- More bands means more impermeability
How permeable are tight junctions?
- Experiments with tracer molecules show how effective tight junctions are at preventing movement of molecules between cells. Permeability varies in different cell types
What is the role of adherens junctions?
- They link epithelial cells to each other
- Link with cell cytoskeleton rather than intermediate filaments through actin
- They involve homophillic interactions between cell adhesion molecules called cadherins
- E, P, N cadherins (classical)
What are the interactions between adherens junctions?
- Cadherins are transmembrane proteins, made up of flexible extracellular domain
- The flexibility is stabilised if you have Ca2+ so it extends into the extra-cellular space and adheres to each other via N-terminal cadherin repeat
What other proteins are there in adherens junctions?
- Links to the actin cytoskeleton via linker/adaptor proteins
- beta-catenin
- alpha-catenin
- p120 catenin
- gamma-catenin
- vinculin
- Beta catenin also functions in growth factor signalling
What is the funciton of adherens junctions in movement?
What is a prominent example of epithelial folding in development?
- Formation of neural tube
- Notochord releases factors that stimulate infolding in neural tube
- Change in cadherin as cells change their fate
- Shows how cells change patterns of cadherin expression during tissue morphogenesis
How do cadherins influence cell sorting?
How is cadherin used in embryogenesis?
- Cells from different layers of an early amphibian embryo will sort according to their origins,
- mesoderm (green), neural plate (blue), and epidermis (red) sort into a structure that resembles and embryo with a neural tube in the centre
What do desmosomes do?
- they spot weld cells together
- Distribute tensile forces
- Inter-connect intermediate filaments of adjacent cells
- Found in tissues subject to high mechanical stress such as the heart, muscle and epidermis
What molecules interact in desmosomes?
- Link epithelial cells to each other via homophillic interactions between cell adhesion molecules of the cadherin family (desmoglein, desmocollin)
- Non classical cadherins
- Link with cytoskeleton (intermediate filaments) via adaptor proteins (plakoglobin, plakophillin, desmoplakin)
How do desmosomes compare to adherens junctions with reference to the actin filaments?
- Actin filaments terminates while intermediate continutes to pass through
What are the characteristics of intermediate filaments?
- Criss cross cell cytoplasm
- Confer tensile strength
- Intermediate filaments are often cells specific (desmin in the heart, keratin in the skin and other epithelia)
How do desmosomes relate to autoimmune disease?
- Pemphigus vulgaris due to antibodies to desdemonal proteins which distrupt the desmosome
- Causes skin and mucosal blistering as epidermis separates from dermis
- Potentially fatal
How do desmosomes relate to congenital disease?
- Epidermolysis bullosa simplex due to mutations in keratins
- Cuases skin and mucosal blistering
- Potentially fatal