Mucin gene expression in immortalized human corneal-limbal and conjunctival epithelial cell lines
Abstract
The corneal and conjunctival epithelia, which cover the ocular surface, play an important role in preventing pathogen penetrance into the eye and maintaining a wet-surface phenotype by producing highly hydrophilic mucin molecules for their apical surfaces. Ocular surface infections, wounding, and pathologies resulting in dry eye threaten sight and can cause blindness. Understanding the ocular surface defense mechanisms that mucins provide has been hampered by the lack of immortalized human corneal and conjunctival epithelial cell lines that retain mucin gene expression patterns of the native tissue. The purpose of this work was to characterize newly developed immortalized corneal and conjunctival cell lines using mucin gene expression as markers of differentiation. The cell lines were derived as described by a previously published process. Primary cultures of corneal-limbal and conjunctival epithelia were sequentially transduced to express a dominant negative p53 protein and a p16(INK4A/Rb)-resistant, mutant cdk4 protein, which enabled the cells to bypass a senescence mechanism recently identified for primary cultures of keratinocytes. These cells were then transduced to express the catalytic subunit of telomerase to permit the...Continue Reading
Citations
An ex vivo model of coxsackievirus infection using multilayered human conjunctival epithelial cells.
The Boston Keratoprosthesis: comparing corneal epithelial cell compatibility with titanium and PMMA.
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