PURPOSE To investigate the structural remodeling in gap junctions associated with cholesterol redistribution during fiber cell maturation in the adult chicken lens. We also evaluated the hypothesis that the cleavage of the COOH-terminus of chick Cx50 (formerly Cx45.6) during fiber cell maturation would affect the gap junction remodeling. METHODS Freeze-fracture TEM and filipin cytochemistry w...

In this paper, a comparison is made between the measured and calculated vibration reduction indices (Kij ) and the engineering approximations in EN 12354-1. First, the existing expressions in EN 12354-1 for simple junctions of homogeneous elements are compared with a large data set of measured and calculated Kij spectra. For more complex junctions, not in EN 12354-1, like junctions with cavity ...

Tight junctions between epithelial cells are believed to control the paracellular diffusion of substances across epithelia. Epithelia in which tight junctions are poorly developed display a higher paracellular electrical conductance, while those with extensive tight junctions show lower conductance values. We described here a particular epithelium, that of the proximal tubules of the Necturus k...

We aligned 21,504 publicly available Illumina-sequenced human RNA-seq samples from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) to the human genome and compared detected exon-exon junctions with junctions in several recent gene annotations. 56,865 junctions (18.6%) found in at least 1,000 samples were not annotated, and their expression associated with tissue type. Newer samples contributed few novel well-s...

The subcellular distributions and co-associations of the gap junction-forming proteins connexin 47 and connexin 32 were investigated in oligodendrocytes of adult mouse and rat CNS. By confocal immunofluorescence light microscopy, abundant connexin 47 was co-localized with astrocytic connexin 43 on oligodendrocyte somata, and along myelinated fibers, whereas connexin 32 without connexin 47 was c...

Nearly 40 years ago, Holliday proposed a four-stranded complex or junction as the central intermediate in the general mechanism of genetic recombination. During the past two years, six single-crystal structures of such DNA junctions have been determined by three different research groups. These structures all essentially adopt the antiparallel stacked-X conformation, but can be classified into ...

Tight junctions are intercellular junctions localized at the most apical end of the lateral plasma membrane. They consist of four kinds of transmembrane proteins (occludin, claudins, junctional adhesion molecules, and tricellulin) and huge numbers of scaffolding proteins and contribute to the paracellular barrier and fence function. The mutation and deletion of these proteins impair the functio...

This paper describes an efficient approach for the detection of level-line junctions in images. Potential junctions are exhibited independent from noise by their consistent local level-variation. Then, level-lines are tracked through junctions in descending the level-line flow. Flow junctions are extracted as image primitives to support matching in many applications. The primitive is robust aga...

Tight junctions are the most apical intercellular junctions of epithelial and endothelial cells and create a regulatable semipermeable diffusion barrier between individual cells. On a cellular level, they form an intramembrane diffusion fence that restricts the intermixing of apical and basolateral membrane components. In addition to these well defined functions, more recent evidence suggests t...

Gap junctions are sites of intercellular communication where cells are interconnected by small aqueous channels (Figure 1b). The term is morphological, for in transmission electron micrographs of thin sections, the unit membranes of the joined cells are seen to remain separated by a gap of about 2 nm (Figure 1a, inset). The gap of gap junctions distinguishes them from tight junctions, or zonula...