Chen L, Meng M Q
Department of Cell Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
J Theor Biol. 1995 Sep 7;176(1):39-45. doi: 10.1006/jtbi.1995.0174.
Gap junctions have been thought of as prime sites for the passive communication of small molecules between two adjacent cells. The sizes of a gap junction plaque may range from a few junctional particles to several thousands particles on the interface of two cells, with little being known about the relative contribution of different patterns of junctional plaques on diffusion mediated cell--cell communication. In this paper, by constructing a simple cubic lattice model of a two-cell system, the effects on communication efficiency of two extreme distribution patterns of individual junctional particles rae investigated. This model indicates that scattered gap junctions are an order of magnitude higher in communication efficiency than compact junctional plaques of equal number of total junctional particles. Thus, it is possible that modulation of cell-cell communication may rely on the interconversion of these two states with compact plaques existing as an inactive communication form. Any correlation of gap junctional membrane with cell-cell communication should therefore also take into account its configuration. It is possible that an increase in number and area of tightly packed gap junctional plaques may actually decrease, instead of increase, cell-cell communication.
间隙连接一直被认为是两个相邻细胞之间小分子被动通讯的主要位点。间隙连接斑的大小在两个细胞界面上可能从几个连接颗粒到数千个颗粒不等，关于不同模式的连接斑对扩散介导的细胞间通讯的相对贡献知之甚少。在本文中，通过构建一个双细胞系统的简单立方晶格模型，研究了单个连接颗粒的两种极端分布模式对通讯效率的影响。该模型表明，分散的间隙连接在通讯效率上比相同总数连接颗粒的紧密连接斑高一个数量级。因此，细胞间通讯的调节可能依赖于这两种状态的相互转换，紧密斑作为一种无活性的通讯形式存在。因此，间隙连接膜与细胞间通讯的任何相关性也应考虑其构型。紧密堆积的间隙连接斑数量和面积的增加实际上可能会降低而不是增加细胞间通讯。
