Tight junctions are critical structures for the stability of an organism. They are responsible for forming the seal that controls paracellular transport. This group of proteins came under increased scrutiny with the discovery of claudin proteins in the 1990s. Tight junction proteins are involved in numerous disorders including cancer, inflammation, congenital diseases, and infertility. In-depth understanding of the interactions of components of the tight junction proteins system provides insight into their roles in disease development and progression. This collection brings together several of the techniques developed to study the intricate aspects of tight junction proteins, including identification of different tight junction proteins which interact with each other and quantifying this interaction, assessing the integrity of the epithelial barrier of the intestinal wall, quantifying the adhesion forces exerted by tight junctions at the cellular level, characterizing the interaction kinetics of tight junction proteins at the molecular level, assessing the cellular fencing function provided by the tight junction proteins, determining the role of certain tight junction proteins in cellular life and death, and identifying critical regions within the genome for regulation of claudin genes. 

Examples of methods to be used in this collection are: tracer-based microscopic assays, immunogold labelling to identify cellular localization of tight junction proteins, gene reporter assays, siRNA against specific tight junction proteins, confocal immunofluorescence, in-vivo imaging of tight junction proteins, NGS, coculture methods, dual micropipette assay, single molecular force spectroscopy using atomic force microscopy, transepithelial electrical resistance (TER) method, multiplex IHC, fluorescence microscopy (e.g. immunofluorescence, FRET, super-resolution microscopy), biophysical approaches (X-ray crystallography, NMR, etc.) and microarray-based techniques (i.e. tissue and protein arrays).