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Posted on Dec 29, 2004, 5 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
Light-detecting cells in the eye must renew their light-gathering apparatus each day at sunrise (for rod cells) or sunset (for cone cells) by shedding their outermost tips, which are then gobbled up and digested by surface (epithelial) cells. Nandrot and colleages now report in the December 20 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine that the epithelial cells need a protein called an integrin to detect when and how to gobble up the debris.
Light-detecting cells in the eye must renew their light-gathering apparatus each day at sunrise (for rod cells) or sunset (for cone cells) by shedding their outermost tips, which are then gobbled up and digested by surface (epithelial) cells. Nandrot and colleages now report in the December 20 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine that the epithelial cells need a protein called an integrin to detect when and how to gobble up the debris.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041220024057.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041220024057.htm
