Published September 20, 1991
| public
Journal Article
Atomic force microscopy and dissection of gap junctions
Abstract
An atomic force microscope (AFM) was used to study the structure of isolated hepatic gap junctions in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). The thickness of these gap junctions appears to be 14.4 nanometers, close to the dimensions reported by electron microscopy (EM). When an increasing force is applied to the microscope tip, the top membrane of the gap junction can be "dissected" away, leaving the extracellular domains of the bottom membrane exposed. When such "force dissection" is performed on samples both trypsinized and fixed with glutaraldehyde, the hexagonal array of gap junction hemichannels is revealed, with a center-to-center spacing of 9.1 nanometers.
Additional Information
© 1991 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 25 February 1991; Accepted 12 June 1991. Supported by NIH grants R37HL21788 to M.F.A. and HL37109 and BRSG-RR07003 to J.-P.R. We thank B. Drake of Imaging Services for his help with the operation of the AFM; R. Johnson, P. Lampke, K. Puranam, and B. Yancey for comments on the manuscript; P. Bjorkman for help in interpreting the Fourier transform; and M. Jentoft-Nilsen for helpful discussions.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 53628
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.1910206
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150113-114629400
- R37HL21788
- NIH
- HL37109
- NIH
- BRSG-RR07003
- NIH
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2015-01-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field