Tissue-Specific Stem Cell Niche

Abstract

Dramatic developments in cell biology generally and methods for isolation, tagging and imaging cells specifically have resulted in major increases in our understanding of stem cell biology. This includes significant advances in identifying and char- acterizing tissue-specific stem cells and their specific niches. Given perhaps the surprising nature of multiple niches, i.e., their common components, the search remains intense to understand the feature and factors that result in the specificities of the niches for particular tissue-specific stem cells. To provide a summary of what we now know and what remains to be established, I have solicited contributions from several groups that are actively working on different tissue-specific stem cells.