Getting organized: Study shows how breast cell communities organize into breast tissue
In biology, the key to a healthy life is organization. Cells that properly organize themselves into communities live long and prosper, whereas disorganized cells can become cancerous. A study by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the different types of cells that make up the human breast shows that not only do cells possess an innate ability to self-organize into communities, but these communities of different types of cells can also organize themselves with respect to one another to form and maintain healthy tissue. Understanding this ability of different types of cell communities to self-organize into tissue may help explain how the processes of stem cell differentiation and tissue architecture maintenance are coordinated. It might also lead to a better understanding of what goes wrong in cancer.