The origin of human epithelial tissue
Miguel Alaminos1,2 and Antonio Campos1,2
1Tissue Engineering Group, Department of Histology, University of Granada and 2Instituto de Investigación Biosanitaria ibs.GRANADA, Granada, Spain
Corresponding Authors: Miguel Alaminos (ORCID: 0000-0003-4876-2672) and Antonio Campos (ORCID: 0000-0003-4061-8182), Department of Histology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Granada, Avenida de la Investigación 11, E18016 Granada, Spain. e-mail: malaminos@ugr.es and acampos@ugr.es
Summary. The histological structure of human epithelial tissue is complex, but all epithelia share three major features: cohesion, polarity and attachment. These functions are mainly achieved by the presence of specialized structures such as intercellular junctions, polarity protein complexes and basement membranes. In the present review, we have analyzed the presence of each of these structures in several groups of animals that are considered to be at the base of the animal evolution tree. Interestingly, these characters seem to have evolved independently, and a careful histological and structural analysis of the phylogenetic tree shows different groups of animals in which epithelia are absent and groups in which cells show only some of the specialized structures found in differentiated epithelia. These findings could contribute to understand how epithelial tissues evolved and determine their current protective functions. Histol Histopathol 38, 127-138 (2023)
Key words: Histology, Epithelium, Evolution
DOI: 10.14670/HH-18-485
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©The Author(s) 2023. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY International License. |
