COMMENTARY

Exocrine pancreas

The importance of keeping in touch: regulation of cell-cell contact in the exocrine pancreas

M V Apte, J S Wilson

Pancreatic Research Group, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Associate Professor M Apte
Director, Pancreatic Research Group, South Western Sydney Clinical School, The University of New South Wales, Level 2, Thomas and Rachel Moore Education Centre, Liverpool Hospital, Liverpool, NSW 2170, Australia; m.apte@unsw.edu.au

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New insights into the mechanisms regulating acinar cell-cell contact in the exocrine pancreas, with evidence to support a role for PTP as a key molecule in stabilisation of the adhesion complex in acinar cells via continuous dephosphorylation of the cadherin-catenin complex

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Keywords: cadherin-catenin complex; orthovanadate; pancreatitis; protein tyrosine phosphatases; tyrosine phosphorylation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The formation of tissues and organs of multicellular organisms during embryonic development involves a highly regulated process of integration and segregation of heterogeneous cell populations into organised cell patterns.¹ One of the major regulators of the processes of cell migration, proliferation, and differentiation during organogenesis is cell-cell adhesion, which is predominantly mediated by cell surface glycoproteins. These cell adhesion proteins can respond to cell signalling events and can also transduce signals into the cell.² Four major groups of cell adhesion proteins have been described, including integrins, immunoglobulins, selectins, and cadherins.

Cadherins are a superfamily of integral membrane proteins that are subdivided into six gene families.¹ E-cadherin, a member of the classical cadherin type I family, has been widely studied in a variety of epithelial cell systems.^2–5 Like most cadherins, E-cadherin is a transmembrane glycoprotein with an extracellular domain that interacts with the extracellular domains of cadherin molecules of . . . [Full text of this article]

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