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Developmental biology

Birds of a feather flock together

Nature volume 395, pages 324–325 (1998)Cite this article

The phenomenon is familiar to anyone who has ever hosted a party. Despite one's best efforts to mix a diverse group of people, the guests rapidly sort themselves out by affinity — in one corner people discuss Titanic, in another corner guests talk football, while on the balcony new parents commiserate about sleep deprivation. But sorting by affinity does not apply only to party guests; it is key to the ability of different cells in our body to form organized tissues. Although this has long been suspected on theoretical grounds, and supported by work with cultured cells, reports by Godt and Tepass1 (on page 387 of this issue) and González-Reyes and St Johnston2 (in Development) provide the first compelling evidence that cell sorting by affinity produces organized tissues in the whole animal.

For a cell to discriminate between neighbours, it must have molecules on its surface that can recognize molecules on adjoining cells. These include proteins of the cadherin family, which are attractive candidates for molecules that could help cells to sort by affinity. First, cadherin extracellular domains project from the surface of one cell and grab the extracellular domains of identical cadherins on neighbouring cells, thereby holding cells together. Second, there are a variety of cadherins, each of which can associate only with an identical cadherin. Thus, if cells expressing two different cadherins are mixed in culture, they sort from one another5. Third, different embryonic cells express different cadherins, so prospective neural cells expressing N-cadherin should sort from prospective skin cells that express E-cadherin. Differential expression of cadherins has therefore been suggested as the driving force behind certain morphogenetic events in the whole animal.

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Figure 1: Like poles attract — cell sorting during development.

References

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  1. the Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology and Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, 27599-3280, North Carolina, USA

    Mark Peifer

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  1. Mark Peifer
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Peifer, M. Birds of a feather flock together. Nature 395, 324–325 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/26345

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