Grant: Project Grant

Cells such as those found in the intesting, kidney or skin are used to form barriers between your body the environment to ensure pathogens like bacteria and virsuses do not move into or through the body and to ensure that your blood or other body fluids are contained. Cell do this by creating junctions or barriers made of proteins between neighbouring cells and when three cells meet at the corners cells also make a tricellular junction. It is clear how the permeability barrier forms at the boundary between two cells but less is known about how the corners of cells create the permeability barrier. To understand how this important junction forms and is regulated, we will identify and study those proteins that are uniquely located at this tricellular junction using the model system Drosophila (fruit fly). In fruit flies we can easily discover new proteins and test their functions.. If we understand how this tricellular junction is controlled we can then understand how it functions. We know this complex is highly conserved in humans but the function of these proteins the tricellular junction has never been studied. Therefore we can take advantage of the ease of the genetics and cell biology capable in Drosophila to understand the function of this family of proteins in epithelial cells in all animals.