Fernando Martín-Belmonte: Epithelia embrace the space

F or multicellular animals, the interface between " inside " and " outside " is demarcated by epithelia. Epithelial sheets form a barrier separating internal tissues from the environment, and inside the body they delineate different tissues and line the open spaces, or lumens, that riddle even the simplest organisms. In fact, lumenal spaces—the gut, blood vessels , and other tubules and chambers—are themselves generated by epithelia during organismal development through mechanisms that are only now being understood. Fernando Martín-Belmonte was seduced by the study of epithelial biology as a graduate student (1) and has since striven to detail the mechanisms of epi-thelial morphogenesis (2–4) and lumen development (4, 5). Having delved deeply into these questions using in vitro models , Martín-Belmonte is now exploring how these processes occur in vivo, as we learned when we spoke with him at his of-fi ce in Madrid's Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CSIC-UAM). What interests did you have as a child? I grew up in Madrid, but I loved mountaineering and hiking outdoors. I remember doing a lot of that when I was a kid. My father was very fond of it, and we often went to the mountains to climb and hike. I also went a lot with one of my brothers, Alberto, but unfortunately he died while climbing in the mountains when I was a teenager. After that I stopped going for a while. But now enough time has passed that I'm able to enjoy being out there again. Every year I go with a bunch of friends to the Pyrenees to summit one of the peaks. Are you looking forward to your next mountaineering trip this summer? Actually right now I am looking forward to getting some sleep. [Laughs] My wife and I have a new baby daughter, who arrived just a few weeks ago. We also have a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, and it is true what they say: having two kids is more than double the work. But it's very nice as well. I can't complain. I'm really happy. What did you want to be as a kid? Not a scientist, for sure! Maybe I wanted to be a soccer player, like probably every body else in Spain. I had a really good teacher when I was 14 or 15, and he was an enthusiastic follower of Santiago Ramón y Cajal's work in the nineteenth century. He was …