Corneal keratocyte
cell type
Corneal keratocytes (corneal fibroblasts) are specialized fibroblasts residing in the stroma. This corneal layer, representing about 85-90% of corneal thickness, is built up from highly regular collagenous lamellae and extracellular matrix components. Keratocytes play the major role in keeping it transparent, healing its wounds, and synthesizing its components. In the unperturbed cornea keratocytes stay dormant, coming into action after any kind of injury or inflammation. Some keratocytes underlying the site of injury, even a light one, undergo apoptosis immediately after the injury. Any glitch in the precisely orchestrated process of healing may cloud the cornea, while excessive keratocyte apoptosis may be a part of the pathological process in the degenerative corneal disorders such as keratoconus, and these considerations prompt the ongoing research into the function of these cells.
Origin and functions
Keratocytes are developmentally derived from the cranial population of neural crest cells, from whence they migrate to settle in the mesenchyme. In some species the migration from neural crest comes in two waves, with the first giving birth to the corneal endothelium and the second invading the epithelium-secreted stromal anlage devoid of cells; in other species both populations come from a single wave of migration. Once settled in the stroma, keratocytes start synthesizing collagen molecules of different types (I, V, VI) and keratan sulfate. By the moment of eye opening after birth the proliferation of keratocytes is all but finished and most of them are in the quiescent state.
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This entry incorporates text from “Corneal keratocyte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.