Studies on polarized trafficking in epithelia.

摘要

Epithelial cells have the same organelles and cytoskeletal elements as other cells however organize them in a very special fashion to perform their various physiological roles in the organism. A key property of epithelial cells is their polarity, which allows them to act as selective barriers between the organism and its environment. In this dissertation, I discuss the mechanisms involved in the generation of apical-basal polarity of epithelial cells and present data showing how the absence of a specific basolateral polarity adaptor (the clathrin adaptor AP1B, present in most body epithelia) in the kidney's proximal tubule and the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) contributes to their specialized physiological phenotype. I discuss the history of the methods to study cell biology and describe my own contributions to increase this cell biology toolbox. I end with a group of experiments that describe the intimate association of the Golgi apparatus and recycling endosomes and how this association facilitates the sorting process in polarized and non-polarized cells.