Fig. 2.

Breast morphogenesis in 3D cell culture. During conventional cell culture, cells proliferate in a monolayer forming a sheet of cells at the bottom of the culture dish. This is an environment that is highly abstract to cells that in vivo find them self in a 3D environment. This may have great effects on gene expression resulting in altered phenotype. When seeded in a 3D matrix such as reconstituted basement membrane (rBM) matrix the same cells can undergo drastically different morphogenesis, forming polarized spheres with a central lumen, or as for certain cell lines, branching morphogenesis