Year: 2021
Type: editorial
Abstract: Membrane Processes in Erythroid Development and Red Cell Life TimeDespite the intense research on erythroid development of the past years, many questions are still open concerning the red blood cell (RBC) life cycle: the maturation of the reticulocyte (retic), a process that for its complexity is now defined terminal erythroid maturation, and RBC senescence and death.Although for subject and methodology the papers included in this Research Topic are very diverse, they all represent a snap-shot of the most relevant questions of RBC physiology being addressed at the moment.When published, in 1986, "The Reticulocyte, " a book by Samuel Mitja Rapoport, represented a thorough perusal of the currently available literature and own work, set the basis for, and stimulated the systematic investigations that followed.The book was seminal, one can find there the seeds of all the important avenues that retic investigators undertook in the years to come.The idea that ATP-ubiquitin-dependent processes control the breakdown of selected retic proteins was there (Ciechanover's discovery of ubiquitin in rabbit retics dated back to only a few years earlier).So were the concepts, although still in their embryonic stage, of autophagic mechanisms for the degradation of mitochondria, and of vesicular trafficking for the selective release of plasma membrane proteins (e.g., the transferrin receptor, TfR) and lipids in the form of vesicles (now called exosomes).In the years to follow, significant advancements have been made in the understanding of erythroid and retic maturation in the marrow.Among other issues that have remained rather unexplored is the question of the relation between the maturation of retics and the aging of RBCs.The importance of this question was stressed by Rapoport in the concluding remarks of his book (Rapoport, 1986).Understanding of the mechanisms underlying retic production, release, and maturation is a key to successful production of RBCs from discarded (sometimes molecularly engineered) stem cells for transfusion purposes.The perfection of the techniques for ex vivo production of retics may also be useful for research, for instance to obtain retics from other mammals, such as the horse, which have no circulating retics (Kämpf et al.).This brings us to articles in this series that reveal new aspects of retic maturation in health and disease.Retics are generated by enucleation of the orthochromatic erythroblast and go through a maturation process in which four stages have been identified: from R1 retics in the bone marrow,
Source: Frontiers in Physiology
Language: English
Subfield: Physiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,950
OpenAlex ID: W3131845371