Cell culture of retinal pigment epithelium: Special Issue

This series of review articles highlights how in vitro models of RPE can be effectively used to understand essential functions of the RPE that are not only fundamental to epithelial biology, but also have direct relevance to the visual system. The issue contains reviews from experts in the field covering aspects of basic cell and epithelial biology, namely: the barrier properties of the RPE (Rizzolo, 2014), epithelial polarity (Lehmann et al., 2014), cytoskeleton (Bonilha, 2014), and lysosomes (Guha et al., 2014), as well as properties more unique to the RPE, e.g., vitamin A metabolism (Hu and Bok, 2014), bioenergetics (Adijanto and Philp, 2014), phagocytosis (Mazzoni et al., 2014), ion transport (Reichhart and Strata 2014), and melanin/lipofuscin (Boulton, 2014). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.