Cell Junctions

CELLS interact with each other at short range to form coherent and metabolically Cooperative tissues. An important aspect to cell-to-cell interactions is the formation of specialized junctions at the surfaces of neighboring cells. Alterations in cell junctions may account for some important pathophysiologic phenomena. In this short review, we shall attempt to outline the major types of cell junctions found in vertebrates and mention some of their known functions. Owing to rapid changes both in terminology and in functional concepts, a casual reading of the literature on cell junctions may be confusing because the nomenclature for junctions has not been.