Mural cells are the

vascular smooth muscle cells Vascular smooth muscle is the type of smooth muscle that makes up most of the walls of blood vessels. Structure Vascular smooth muscle refers to the particular type of smooth muscle found within, and composing the majority of the wall of blood ve ...

(vSMCs), and

pericyte Pericytes (previously known as Rouget cells) are multi-functional mural cells of the microcirculation that wrap around the endothelial cells that line the capillaries throughout the body. Pericytes are embedded in the basement membrane of blood ca ...

s, of the

microcirculation The microcirculation is the circulation of the blood in the smallest blood vessels, the microvessels of the microvasculature present within organ tissues. The microvessels include terminal arterioles, metarterioles, capillaries, and venules. ...

. Both types are in close contact with the

endothelial cell The endothelium is a single layer of squamous endothelial cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. The endothelium forms an interface between circulating blood or lymph in the lumen and the rest of the vessel ...

s lining the

capillaries A capillary is a small blood vessel from 5 to 10 micrometres (μm) in diameter. Capillaries are composed of only the tunica intima, consisting of a thin wall of simple squamous endothelial cells. They are the smallest blood vessels in the body: ...

, and are important for vascular development and stability. Mural cells are involved in the formation of normal

vasculature The blood circulatory system is a system of organs that includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood which is circulated throughout the entire body of a human or other vertebrate. It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, tha ...

and are responsive to factors including platelet-derived growth factor B (PDGFB) and

vascular endothelial growth factor Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF, ), originally known as vascular permeability factor (VPF), is a signal protein produced by many cells that stimulates the formation of blood vessels. To be specific, VEGF is a sub-family of growth factors, ...

(VEGF).Fujimoto, Akihisa, Onodera, Hisashi, Mori, Akira, Isobe, Naoki, Yasuda, Seiichi, Oe, Hideaki, Yonenaga, Yoshikuni, Tachibana, Tsuyoshi & Imamura, Masayuki (2004) Vascular endothelial growth factor reduces mural cell coverage of endothelial cells and induces sprouting rather than luminal division in an HT1080 tumour angiogenesis model. International Journal of Experimental Pathology 85 (6), 355-364. The weakness and disorganization of

tumor A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...

vasculature is partly due to the inability of tumors to recruit properly organized mural cells.Abramsson A, Berlin O, Papayan H, Paulin D, Shani M, Betsholtz C. (2002). Analysis of Mural Cell Recruitment to Tumor Vessels. ''Circulation'' 105:112.

Cell type controversy

Mural cells were described for the first time in the late 19th century as contractile cells lining up around the endothelium. In reality, it was a variety of cells that had been observed and bundled up under the common name of Rouget cells. Later studies brought controversy about their contractility, and this remains an elusive point today. Pericytes, vSMCs, and many other perivascular cell types express very similar markers such as Platelet Derived Growth Factor Receptor Beta (PDGFR-B), aminopeptidase-N (CD13), chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan 4 (Ng2), or desmin, which makes their identification difficult and requires a combination of markers: for example vSMCs but not pericytes express alpha-smooth muscle actin (ACTA2). Nowadays, distinctively characterizing these cells requires a combination of markers, cellular location and morphology.

Lineage and zonation of mural cells

Typically, vSMCs wrap around larger vessels: they form a dense continuum spindling around arteries, arterioles and precapillary arterioles; while around postcapillary venules, vSMCs adopt a different morphology: individual cell bodies extending thing branching processes, that become more stellate-like around venules and veins. The cell body of pericytes has a round shape extending a few processes in a longitudinal fashion along the capillaries. Recently, efforts have been undertaken using single cell sequencing on mural cells to try to characterize their molecular signature along the blood vessels. This showed that there is a zonation in their expression patterns by which they can be grouped into different subsets, but no singular markers have been found so far that can identify unequivocally any of the cell types.

References

Animal cells {{cell-biology-stub

Cell type controversy

Lineage and zonation of mural cells

See also

References