Liver Gap Junctions and Lens Fiber Junctions: Comparative Analysis and Calmodulin Interaction
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Excerpt
The mechanism for regulating low-resistance coupling has been one of the most extensively studied problems in the area of gap junction communication. In general, these studies have been of two types: One in which cell-cell communication (coupling) is monitored by electrophysiologic techniques and examined as various parameters are manipulated, and one in which various treatments thought to modify coupling are carried out and correlated with ultrastructural changes of gap junctions, notably particle-packing changes detected by freeze-fracture analysis. Most recently, it has been found that such ultrastructural modifications may occur over a much longer period of time than does uncoupling and recoupling (Raviola et al. 1980), suggesting, at the very least, that these morphological changes in gap junctions are not a primary event associated with the regulation of communication. The data generated by the direct measurement of uncoupling in response to manipulations that increase intracellular calcium concentration (Rose et al. 1977),...
