Objective to investigate the expression of NF-κB and occludin in intestinal mucosal barrier during severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) and its clinical significance. Method Twenty-four Wistar rats were randomly divided into a normal control group, an SAP group, and a PDTC group. The rats were sacrificed at 24h after modeling, and general appearance of the abdominal cavity, pathological changes of t...

Disturbance of the tight junction (TJ) complexes between brain endothelial cells leads to increased paracellular permeability, allowing leukocyte entry into inflamed brain tissue and also contributing to edema formation. The current study dissects the mechanisms by which a chemokine, CCL2, induces TJ disassembly. It investigates the potential role of selective internalization of TJ transmembran...

Chorioamnionitis is an acute inflammatory reaction associated with the premature rupture of the fetal membranes. It is caused mainly by invasion of bacteria from the vaginal tract that can penetrate the intact membranes and invade the amnion cavity and the decidua. Tight junctions (TJs) and adherent junctions (AJs) are intercellular junctions crucial for epithelia adhesion and permeability regu...

PURPOSE To examine the effects of interleukin (IL)-1beta on the resistance and permeability of the tight junctions of cultured retinal pigment epithelial cells. METHODS A human RPE cell line (ARPE-19) cultured on microporous filter-supports was used. IL-1beta and monoclonal anti-IL-1beta antibody-treated IL-1beta (mAbIL-1beta) were added to the standard culture medium. Transepithelial resista...

OS-9 is a lectin required for efficient ubquitination of glycosylated substrates of endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD). OS-9 has previously been implicated in ER-to-Golgi transport and transcription factor turnover. However, we know very little about other functions of OS-9 under endoplasmic reticulum stress. Here, we used gene knockdown and overexpression approaches to study t...

Tight junctions (TJs) are protein complexes comprised of claudins, which anchor them in the membrane and numerous cytosolic scaffolding proteins including MAGI, MUPP1, cingulin and members of the Zonula Occludens (ZO) family. Originally, their main function was thought to be as a paracellular barrier. More recently, however, additional roles in signal transduction, differentiation and prolifera...

White matter lesions (WML) are associated with dementia and are common in brain ageing. In order to determine whether alteration of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) may contribute to the pathogenesis of WML we assessed albumin leakage and expression of the tight junction (TJ) proteins claudin-5 (Cln-5), zona occludin-1 (ZO-1) and occludin in cases derived from the Medical Research Council Cognitiv...

In this study, we tested the hypotheses that endothelial cells (ECs) derived from human umbilical cord blood (hCB-ECs) exhibit low permeability, which increases as hCB-ECs age and undergo senescence, and that the change in the permeability of hCB-ECs is due to changes in tight junction protein localization and the activity of exchange protein activated by cAMP (Epac)1. Albumin permeability acro...

Occludin and several proteins of the claudin family have been identiried in simple epithelia and in endothelia as major and structure-determining transmembrane proteins clustered in the barrier-forming tight junctions (TJ), where they are associated with a variety of TJ plaque proteins, including protein ZO-1. To examine whether TJ also occur in the squamous stratified epithelium of the interfo...

In mammalian testes, such as rats, the mechanism(s) that regulate blood-testis barrier (BTB) restructuring at stages VIII-IX of the seminiferous epithelial cycle of spermatogenesis to facilitate the transit of preleptotene/leptotene spermatocytes is not known. This is due to the lack of information on the regulatory proteins at the BTB. Herein, focal adhesion kinase (FAK), a nonreceptor protein...