MORPHOGENESIS OF 3-D STRUCTURE OF EPITHELIA AND PRINCIPLES OF THEIR RECONSTRUCTION

G. A. Savostyanov, N.M. Grefner, O.F. Lutskaja and K. Savostyanova

The 3-D structure of epithelia remains practically unknown so far owing to the complexity of its reconstruction. Such situation hinders the investigstion of their normal development and does not permit to find out the matter of their reorganization in pathology. In this connection a new approach to cell`s sheets space organization study was developed. The approach is based on: 1) the study of theoretical representations about a modular structure of tissues, 2) creations of 3-D models of epithelial space organization on this basis, and 3) their experimental approbations. Within the framework of such an approach the space organization of symple, pseudostratified and stratified epithelia is considered. Theoretical evidence that as many as 11 topological variants of cells arrangement (cell mosaic patterns) are available for simple epithelium instead of a single one suggested so far, were found. Up to now 8 variants of such epithelial mosaics in different animals have been already found experimentally. The discovery of others is possible in future. The topology of pseudostratified and stratified epithelia is also multivariant. Such earlier unknown properties of tissues as translation symmetry and stoichiometry of a structure are described. It was shown, that this approach permits to find out the law of 3-D organization of tissues, to predict their change during normal and pathological morphogenesis and to find some new informative characteristics for diagnostics.


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