Daily Archives: April 2, 2018

NICE Review of a few cell adhesion molecules

Cell adhesion molecules, The cell: images, Ultimate order, the cell

It is worth reading this nice review article which deals with adherens junctions and also some other cell adhesion molecules.

Oda and Takeichi 2011 have this nice electron micrograph or cell-cell adhesion, but it is even more interesting to me that the area described with the confines of their arrows, and the area within their bracket, does not show as distinct an organization as the area inbetween their designated zones… Haha.  see bottom two micrographs, their photo unretouched, and the area where I see amazing order, an area which is very organized.

semicircular arrangement (black lines), likely proteins which attach to whatever membrane proteins the circles are, and then the red lines as some molecule which links the former with some cytoskeletal element.  There is a great microtubule over by their arrows, i don’t know what is under their bracket.

Just a note: it looks like the primitive junctional complexes in drosophila are the result of one-size-fits-all type molecule with little segments snipped out as DE-cadherin has every thing but the kitchen sink there….including laminin, proteolytic, and EGF-like domains.

 

Right hand:left hand

Rants, Ultimate order, the cell

Sometimes I get dismayed at what the university of cincinnati (along with cincinnati children’s hospital) finds acceptable.  Just one parking lot away from the department of environmental health, where government has funded the removal of lead and asbestos in an effort to make the city a safer place to live, are two giant yellow excavators pulling down 100 year old neighboring houses (not that i am bemoaning the loss of less well kept property) unquestionably filled with lead paint, asbestos, mold and piles of trash billowing up dust clouds that would signal that much is airborne that should NOT be airborne. So cincinnati children’s is (has/continues) expanding into a very old neighborhood adjacent to it) but doing it in a way that is environmentally reckless (in my opinion).

I have met and talked to residents in those homes…  I remember one in particular at the south-east corner of burnet and erkenbrecher  who was a long last holdout before he sold to children’s hospital.  I have spoken with the owners of two of the very lovely old brick victorian houses on erkenbrecher, one a professor here, and i wonder whether greed will overtake historical value for them as well.

two issues here: 1) environmental health is important — and it is the biggest department at the university of cincinnati BUT why can its neighbor (also part of UC) disregard the information, persuasion, good policy of its back-door neighbor and pollute the environment of its own “house” so to speak.  I dont get it. Doesnt the right hand know what the left hand is doing. 2) second issue is just preservation of history.