Fig 1.

Western Blot analysis of tight junction proteins in membrane fractions of (A) testis and (B) lung (control). For negative controls, a soluble fraction (S1) of lung was used. (A) Tight junctions in the membrane fractions of human, mouse, and rat testis with three individuals each (I-III). The vinculin loading controls correspond to the experiments presented above, respectively. The testis of human (aged 65, 77 and 31), mouse and rat contain detectable amounts of claudin-11. On the same (stripped and retreated) membrane, occludin could only be detected clearly in mouse and rat whereas human testis contains only negligible amounts. No claudin-3 was found in testis of human and rat, but in mouse. (B) Tight junctions in the membrane fractions of human, mouse and rat lung. Vinculin loading control corresponds to all experiments. No claudin-11 was detected in the lung of rat and mouse. Occludin was found in lung of human, but not in rat or mouse. Strong claudin-3 expression was found in the lung of all three species. Mouse lung cytosolic fraction was only positive for vinculin, as expected. Abbreviations: S1 soluble fraction, hu human, ms mouse, rt rat.