Abstract
The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a key process required for building the early body plan of metazoa. It involves coordinated and precisely timed changes in multiple cell processes such as de-adhesion, motility, invasion, and cell polarity. While much has been learned about how embryos deploy epithelial-mesenchymal transitions since Betty Hay named the process decades ago, a number of things are still not well understood. Here I will discuss some of the big questions that remain, including how is all of this controlled, how does each of the cell biological events work, and how are they so nicely coordinated with one another?
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to the many students and postdocs in the McClay lab who contributed so much over the years to advance our understanding of the EMT. Thanks also to the NIH for supporting this work: RO1 HD14483 (to DRM) and PO1 HD 37105 (Project 2 to DRM).
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McClay, D.R. (2021). Perspective on Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transitions in Embryos. In: Campbell, K., Theveneau, E. (eds) The Epithelial-to Mesenchymal Transition. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2179. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0779-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0779-4_2
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