Epigenetic aspects of telocytes/cordocytes: jacks of all trades, masters of most

T/Cs make synaptic contacts of various kinds (including puncta adhaerens and gap junctions) with a broad variety of cells and tissue (including blood vessels, nerve fibers, fibroblasts, muscle cells, immune cells, and glandular cells, as well as other T/Cs). The present consensus is that T/Cs are capable of forming an extensive intercellular information transmission and executive system that may utilize electric currents, small molecules, exosomes—and possibly electrical events within the cytoskeleton—to modulate homeostasis, stem cell activity, tissue repair, peristalsis, anticancer activity, and other complex functions in many organs. Furthermore injured cells rapidly change the specific RNA content of their emitted exosomes (D'Alessandra et al., 2010; Loyer et al., 2014). [...]the signaling molecules we postulate to be emitted by STCs may include cell- and injury-specific miRNAs. Specific signals from damaged tissue could also evoke motor processes in the cytoskeleton, possibly via calcium flows and the electrical signals in the cytoskeleton that we detailed in our previous paper (Smythies and Edelstein, 2013b), such that the cell moves itself and/or its protrusions to the site of injury.