Drosophila Shaking-B protein forms gap junctions in paired Xenopus oocytes

Pauline Phelan (), Lucy A. Stebbings, Richard A. Baines, Jonathan P. Bacon, Jane A. Davies and Chris Ford
Additional contact information
Pauline Phelan: Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, University of Sussex
Lucy A. Stebbings: Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, University of Sussex
Richard A. Baines: University of Cambridge
Jonathan P. Bacon: Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, University of Sussex
Jane A. Davies: Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, University of Sussex
Chris Ford: School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex

Nature, 1998, vol. 391, issue 6663, 181-184

Abstract: Abstract In most multicellular organisms direct cell–cell communication is mediated by the intercellular channels of gap junctions. These channels allow the exchange of ions and molecules that are believed to be essential for cell signalling during development and in some differentiated tissues. Proteins called connexins, which are products of a multigene family, are the structural components of vertebrate gap junctions1,2. Surprisingly, molecular homologues of the connexins have not been described in any invertebrate. A separate gene family, which includes the Drosophila genes shaking-B and l(1)ogre, and the Caenorhabditis elegans genes unc-7 and eat-5, encodes transmembrane proteins with a predicted structure similar to that of the connexins3,4,5,6,7,8,9. shaking-B and eat-5 are required for the formation of functional gap junctions8,10. To test directly whether Shaking-B is a channel protein, we expressed it in paired Xenopus oocytes. Here we show that Shaking-B localizes to the membrane, and that its presence induces the formation of functional intercellular channels. To our knowledge, this is the first structural component of an invertebrate gap junction to be characterized.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/34426 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:391:y:1998:i:6663:d:10.1038_34426

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/34426

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().