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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Acta Physiol (Oxf). 2010 Nov 16;202(3):387–407. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-1716.2010.02195.x

Fig. 10.

Fig. 10

The paracellular pathway in vertebrates and insects. Vertebrate tight junctions and invertebrate septate junctions share in common a structural organization that includes 1) transmembrane spanning proteins that reach into the extracellular space of the junction, and 2) intracellular scaffolding and regulatory proteins that anchor the transmembrane proteins to the cytoskeleton. A, the paracellular pathway in vertebrate epithelia: LIS, lateral interstitial space; AJ, adherens junction; TJ, tight junction; B, the paracellular pathway in invertebrate epithelia SJ, septate junction; SAR, subapical region. See also Fig. 9a for electron micrographs of the septate junction in Aedes Malpighian tubules. Gap junctions and desmosomes are omitted altogether. Adopted from (Furuse and Tsukita, 2006, Knust and Bossinger, 2002).