New York, Jan 4
In a finding that can turn the hitherto accepted model of animal cell communication upside down, scientists have discovered that animal cells can communicate with one another by making physical contact.
“This mechanism is similar to the way neurons communicate with other cells, and contrasts the standard understanding that non-neuronal cells ‘basically spit out signalling proteins into extra-cellular fluid and hope they find the right target’,” said senior investigator Thomas B. Kornberg, professor of biochemistry with University of California, San Francisco.
Working with living tissue from fruit flies, Kornberg and his team demonstrated that cells send out long, thin tubes of cytoplasm called cytonemes which can extend across the length of 50 or 100 cells before touching the cells they are targeting.
The point of contact between a cytoneme and its target cell acts as a communications bridge between the two cells.
By:IANS