Abstract
A cell in the ocean exchanges with a constant reservoir, that is not exhausted of nutrients consumed by the cell nor polluted by the wastes it excretes. On the contrary, when a cell belongs to a metazoan, the situation is completely different, as the ocean is now replaced by an extracellular milieu less than one micron thick, that would be quickly exhausted and spoiled, were it not by a circulatory apparatus that continuously carries nutrients and wastes to and from to enormous areas of epithelia, where the exchange with the extracellular environment actually takes place. Thanks to this continuous purification and stability of the internal milieu performed mainly by “transporting epithelia”, metazoan cells can enormously simplify their housekeeping efforts, and engage instead in differentiation and multiple forms of organization (tissues, organs, systems) that enable them produce an astonishing diversity of higher organisms. Metazoan exist thanks to transporting epithelia. This chapter summarizes the main methods to study the structure and function of the tight junctions, with natural epithelia, as well as monolayers of cell lines grown in vitro on permeable supports.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Drs, Aída Álvarez and Lorena Hinojosa as well as Elizabeth del Oso for expert technical and operative support. The experimental work of the studies included were economically supported by grants and fellowships from the CONACYT, CONACYT-Salud and the CyTDF, scientific research councils of Mexico and the Mexico City respectively.
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Larre, M.I., Flores-Maldonado, C., Cereijido, M. (2013). Methods to Study Tight Junctions. In: Martin, T., Jiang, W. (eds) Tight Junctions in Cancer Metastasis. Cancer Metastasis - Biology and Treatment, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6028-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6028-8_3
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