Accidental encounters: the chance to solve a mystery

Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Cells organize into tissues by adhering to one another. Such intercellular associations can be disrupted artificially and, under the right

culture conditions, the dissociated cells can re-aggregate and reconstitute their original tissue-like structures, as demonstrated by early pioneering studies. When I entered graduate

school, the molecular mechanisms governing these striking cellular behaviours, including the formation of the initial cell–cell contacts, were largely unresolved. At the beginning of my

career, I was interested in lens cell differentiation. Lens epithelial cells differentiate into lens fibres, a process that was thought to depend on unidentified factors released from the

retina. I set out to characterize these putative factors by culturing retinal cells and collecting the culture medium 'conditioned' by these cells, thinking that it might contain

the factors I sought. But when I grew lens cells in this conditioned medium, nothing seemed to happen. After much fruitless effort, I finally noted a difference; lens cells suspended in the

conditioned medium attached to the culture dish more slowly than lens cells in the control medium. This unexpected effect had nothing to do with lens differentiation, but attracted my

interest nonetheless, for I felt it should be somehow possible to analyse the underlying mechanisms. But the tools needed to take a mechanistic approach to problems in cell differentiation

had yet to be developed, and I eventually gave up on the lens. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution Subscribe

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customer support AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Masatoshi Takeichi is Director of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, 2-2-3 Minatojima-Minamimachi, Kobe, 650-0047,

Chuo-ku, Japan Masatoshi Takeichi Authors * Masatoshi Takeichi View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and

permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Takeichi, M. Accidental encounters: the chance to solve a mystery. _Nat Cell Biol_ 12, 2 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb0110-2 Download

citation * Issue Date: January 2010 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb0110-2 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link

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