Conserved mechanisms of repair: from damaged single cells to wounds in multicellular tissues

The capacities to repair minor membrane holes in damaged single cells, and the more major damage sustained when a multicellular tissue is wounded, both involve a series of ancient and highly conserved processes. In this review, we discuss what is known about how the plasma membrane of a single cell and its underlying cortical cytoplasm are repaired following cell damage, and how multicellular wounds to the embryonic and adult skin are also able to heal. Pivotal for all these processes is the actin cytoskeleton and we draw analogies between the actin machineries that drive repair and those that appear to underlie several genetically tractable morphogenetic processes that occur during Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans embryogenesis.