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Cell-to-cell communication in plants, animals, and fungi: a comparative review

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Abstract

Cell-to-cell communication is a prerequisite for differentiation and development in multicellular organisms. This communication has to be tightly regulated to ensure that cellular components such as organelles, macromolecules, hormones, or viruses leave the cell in a precisely organized way. During evolution, plants, animals, and fungi have developed similar ways of responding to this biological challenge. For example, in higher plants, plasmodesmata connect adjacent cells and allow communication to regulate differentiation and development. In animals, two main general structures that enable short- and long-range intercellular communication are known, namely gap junctions and tunneling nanotubes, respectively. Finally, filamentous fungi have also developed specialized structures called septal pores that allow intercellular communication via cytoplasmic flow. This review summarizes the underlying mechanisms for intercellular communication in these three eukaryotic groups and discusses its consequences for the regulation of differentiation and developmental processes.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Beth Richardson (University of Georgia, USA) for the generous gift of Fig. 2a and Michelle Momany (University of Georgia, USA) for establishing the contact. We also want to thank Robert Bauer (Tübingen, Germany) for providing Fig. 2b and Minou Nowrousian and Ines Teichert for critical reading of the manuscript. We are grateful to our anonymous reviewers, who provided highly valuable suggestions for improving this review.

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  1. Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Molekulare Botanik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, ND7/131, Universitätsstraße 150, Bochum, 44780, Germany

    Sandra Bloemendal & Ulrich Kück

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  1. Sandra Bloemendal
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Correspondence to Ulrich Kück.

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Communicated by: Sven Thatje

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Bloemendal, S., Kück, U. Cell-to-cell communication in plants, animals, and fungi: a comparative review. Naturwissenschaften 100, 3–19 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0988-z

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