F. Hernández y Juan F. Madrid. Universidad de Murcia. Departamento de Biología Celular e Histología
Abstract
Besides microfilaments and microtubules,
intermediate filaments are major components of the
cytoskeleton. In epithelial cells intermediate filaments
are formed by heterodimers of specific keratins, whose
expression pattern highly depends on the type of
epithelium and differentiation degree of the cell. During
the process of blastocyst implantation and subsequent
development of the human placenta a very specialized
epithelium appears at the feto-maternal interface.
Arising from the trophectoderm of the blastocyst, the
epithelium-like layer surrounding the early embryoblast,
different trophoblast subtypes differentiate. They either
develop into polar cells fulfilling real epithelial
functions, or apolar tumor-like cells invading the
maternal uterine wall to adapt the maternal tissue to
progressing pregnancy. Thus, the whole trophoblast
population, with all its subtypes, can be considered as an
epithelial compartment and hence expresses keratin
filaments. However, differentiation of trophoblast into
different phenotypes may be linked to remodeling of the
cytoskeletal composition, depending on spatiotemporal
requirements of the respective cells. Here, we focus on
the keratin composition of different trophoblast
subtypes, how these keratins are used in trophoblast
research and what is k