Northwestern Medicine researchers have advanced understanding of how intercellular structures called adherens junctions enable cellular communication. These junctions are pivotal in tissue development and renewal, but their formation is not fully understood. The study, led by Dr. Sergey Troyanovsky, highlights the role of 'pre-junctions'—small cytoskeleton-bound structures that mature into adherens junctions upon cell contact. This discovery focuses on the dynamics of the E-cadherin protein and its interaction with alpha-catenin, offering insights into basic cellular processes essential for tissue coherence and health.
What we have studied here, in simple words, is the glue that connects cells.
One of the basic questions here was: 'What's first? The two cells make contact and then intracellular machinery responds, or vice versa?
Before cells make connections via adherens junctions, they create many small cytoskeleton-bound pre-junctions on the surface of their membranes.
Understanding this process brings us closer to understanding what is going wrong in different diseases.
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