Cell-Cell Junctions

by James W. Nelson (Editor), Elaine Fuchs (Editor)

Cell-cell junctions are multi-molecular complexes that link neighboring cells. They help maintain tissue integrity, act as barriers to permeability, and allow intercellular transport. They also reinforce cell polarity by separating the apical and basolateral domains of the plasma membrane.

Written and edited by experts in the field, thiscollection from Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology includes contributions covering each of the main junction types--tight junctions, adherens junctions, and desmosomes--as well as the more specialized junctions of neuronal and immune cells. The
contributors examine the assembly and structure of different cell junctions, their roles in cellular signal transduction, and their importance during development and normal tissue homeostasis. Including discussion of the roles of junctions in various diseases, the volume is a vital reference for
cell and developmental biologists wishing to know how cells interact in multicellular organisms.

443 pages, Hardcover

First published March 22, 2010

About the author

James W. Nelson was born in a little farmhouse on the prairie in eastern North Dakota in 1944. Some doctors made house calls back then. He remembers kerosene lamps, bathing in a large galvanized tub, and their phone number was a long ring followed by four short ones, and everybody else in the neighborhood could rubberneck. (Imagine that today!)

James has been telling stories most of his life. Some of his first memories happened during recess in a one-room country schoolhouse near Walcott, ND. His little friends, eyes wide, would gather round and listen to his every hastily-imagined word. It was a beginning. Fascinated by the world beginning to open, he remembers listening to the teacher read to all twelve kids in the eight grades.

He was living in that same house on the land originally homesteaded by his great grandfather, when a savage tornado hit in 1955 and destroyed everything. They rebuilt and his family remained until the early nineteen-seventies when diversified farming began changing to industrial agribusiness (not necessarily a "good" thing.) He spent four years in the US Navy, worked many jobs and finally has settled on a few acres exactly two and one half miles straight west of the original farmstead, ironically likely the very spot where the 1955 tornado first struck, which sometimes gives him a spooky feeling.