...Rachael P. Norris; Mark Terasaki ABSTRACT Gap junctions have well-established roles in cell–cell communication by way of forming permeable intercellular channels. Less is understood about their internalization, which forms double membrane vesicles containing cytosol and membranes from another cell...

...Rachael M. Kells-Andrews; Rachel A. Margraf; Charles G. Fisher; Matthias M. Falk ABSTRACT Gap junctions (GJs) assembled from connexin (Cx) proteins allow direct cell–cell communication. While phosphorylation is known to regulate multiple GJ functions, much less is known about the role of ubiquitin...

...Hanjun Li; Gaelle Spagnol; Naava Naslavsky; Steve Caplan; Paul L. Sorgen ABSTRACT Protein kinases have long been reported to regulate connexins; however, little is known about the involvement of phosphatases in the modulation of intercellular communication through gap junctions and the subsequent...

...Clarence A. Dunn; Paul D. Lampe ABSTRACT The proteins that form vertebrate gap junctions, the connexins, are highly regulated and have short (<2 hour) half-lives. Phosphorylation of connexin43 (Cx43) affects gap junction assembly, channel gating and turnover. After finding dramatic effects...

...Tao Huang; Qing Shao; Andrew MacDonald; Li Xin; Robert Lorentz; Donglin Bai; Dale W. Laird Summary Oculodentodigital dysplasia (ODDD) is mainly an autosomal dominant human disease caused by mutations in the GJA1 gene, which encodes the gap junction protein connexin43 (Cx43). Surprisingly...

...Tone Aase Fykerud; Ane Kjenseth; Kay Oliver Schink; Solveig Sirnes; Jarle Bruun; Yasufumi Omori; Andreas Brech; Edgar Rivedal; Edward Leithe Summary Gap junctions consist of arrays of intercellular channels that enable adjacent cells to communicate both electrically and metabolically. Gap junction...

...Lucrecia Márquez-Rosado; Deepika Singh; Hector Rincón-Arano; Joell L. Solan; Paul D. Lampe Vertebrate gap junctions are composed of proteins from the connexin family. Co-immunoprecipitation, in vitro binding and far western experiments demonstrate that mammalian CASK (also known as LIN2) directly...

...Edward Leithe; Ane Kjenseth; Solveig Sirnes; Harald Stenmark; Andreas Brech; Edgar Rivedal Gap junctions are dynamic plasma membrane domains, and their protein constituents, the connexins, have a high turnover rate in most tissue types. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in degradation...

..., yet the C-terminal domain of Cx43 regulated the proportion of gap-junction-like clusters that acquired a low Cx43 mobility state. Collectively, these studies show that Cx43 establishes residency at all cell-surface membrane domains, and progressively acquires assembly states that probably reflect...

...Silvia Penuela; Ruchi Bhalla; Xiang-Qun Gong; Kyle N. Cowan; Steven J. Celetti; Bryce J. Cowan; Donglin Bai; Qing Shao; Dale W. Laird Pannexins are mammalian orthologs of the invertebrate gap junction proteins innexins and thus have been proposed to play a role in gap junctional intercellular...

.... Here, we took advantage of naturally occurring loss-of-gap-junction function mutations of Cx50 (ortholog of chick Cx45.6) and generated the corresponding site mutants in Cx45.6: Cx45.6(D47A) and Cx45.6(P88S). In contrast to wild-type Cx45.6, the mutants failed to form functional gap junctions...

.... ( 2001 ). Expression of functional gap junctions and regulation by fluid flow in osteocyte-like MLO-Y4 cells. J. Bone Miner. Res. 16 , 249 -259. Cherian, P. P., Siller-Jackson, A. J., Gu, S., Wang, X., Bonewald, L. F., Sprague, E. and Jiang, J. X. ( 2005 ). Mechanical strain opens connexin 43...

... and double whole-cell patch clamping. Immunoblotting confirmed production of the mutant proteins, and immuno-fluorescence localized them to punctuate distributions along appositional membranes. Cx40E12S,E13G and Cx43D12S,K13G formed homotypic gap junction channels that allowed intercellular passage...

...Florent Allagnat; David Martin; Daniele F. Condorelli; Gérard Waeber; Jacques-Antoine Haefliger The gap-junction protein connexin36 (Cx36) contributes to control the functions of insulin-producing cells. In this study, we investigated whether the expression of Cx36 is regulated by glucose...

...Joanne E. I. Gittens; Gerald M. Kidder The gap junction proteins connexin37 and connexin43 are required for ovarian folliculogenesis in the mouse. To define their respective roles in oogenesis, chimeric ovaries containing either null mutant oocytes and wild-type granulosa cells or the reverse...

... nascent and steady-state delivery of Cx43 and Cx26 to the plasma membrane and gap junction biogenesis we expressed fluorescent-protein-tagged Cx43 and Cx26 in BICR-M1R k and NRK cells. Static and time-lapse imaging revealed that both connexins were routed through the Golgi apparatus prior to being...

...Joanne E. I. Gittens; Kevin J. Barr; Barbara C. Vanderhyden; Gerald M. Kidder Intercellular communication is required for ovarian folliculogenesis. This is apparent in mice lacking connexin43 (Cx43, a gap junction protein strongly expressed in granulosa cells), or growth/differentiation factor-9...

.... To explore the respective roles of these two connexins in gap-junctional communication between the developing murine oocyte and its surrounding cumulus granulosa cells, we used confocal immunofluorescence microscopy and oocyte preloading functional assays. Immunofluorescence microscopy located Cx37 within...

...Joanna Gemel; Virginijus Valiunas; Peter R. Brink; Eric C. Beyer Many cells contain two (or more) gap junction proteins that are able to oligomerize with each other to form heteromeric gap junction channels and influence the properties of intercellular communication. Cx26 and Cx43 are found...

...George C. Lin; Jacqueline K. Rurangirwa; Michael Koval; Thomas H. Steinberg Gap junctional communication modulates intercellular calcium signaling in many cell types. We have investigated whether gap junctional communication modulates calcium oscillatory behavior of cells responding to an agonist...