Cell culture of retinal pigment epithelium: Special Issue

•Introduction to special issue featuring articles on current methods for use of cultured retinal pigment epithelium (RPE).•Milestones in the early development of RPE cell culture.•List of signature genes and proteins that should be detectable in cultured RPE.•Sets forth underlying rationales for research involving cultured RPE.•Media formulations, porous supports, and time in culture, may influence results.

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 Strauß, 2014), and melanin/lipofuscin (Boulton, 2014).