Courtesy of Philip B. Messersmith
Fibroblasts are cellular workhorses of extracellular matrix production, spinning out the majority of collagens, the most abundant proteins in the animal kingdom.
Appreciation in biology can come slowly. Researchers once deemed as junk the parts of genes not represented in proteins; likewise, neuroglia were thought to be mere bystanders to neurons. So it is with the extracellular matrix (ECM), the "scaffolding" and "glue" that fill the spaces among cells. New ways of excavating the ECM reveal that it is much more.
An eclectic collection of molecules, the ECM was once relegated to the backwater of connective tissues in histology texts. But, ECM's status is shifting. Henry E. Young, an associate professor in anatomy at the Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga., calls it "a three-dimensional 'spider web' lattice-work-like structure within a fourth-dimensional time continuum." The various guises of ECM are dynamic, with profound ...
