Just as the anatomists of yesteryear were working to understand body function based on dissections of the human body, a new generation of molecular anatomists are working to understand how cell structure and function are determined by the organization and dynamics of the intracellular cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix.
Until recently the cytoskeleton was considered to be a fairly simple scaffolding which gave cells their shape—and allowed the intracellular organelles to be positioned in the cytoplasm and to redistribute during mitosis. The number of known proteins was relatively small, and little if anything was known about the molecular basis for their assembly, function, or regulation. The extent to which things have changed since T.L. Steck identified the submembraneous cytoskeleton in the red blood cell membrane in the early 1970s was highlighted at the 50th Annual Meeting and Symposium of the Society of General Physiologists,...
