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Abstract
Tightly controlled epithelial and endothelial barriers are a prerequisite for life as these barriers separate multicellular organisms from their environment and serve as first lines of defense. Barriers between neighboring epithelial cells are formed by multiple intercellular junctions including the ‘apical junctional complex—AJC’ with tight junctions (TJ), adherens junctions (AJ), and desmosomes. TJ consist of tetraspan transmembrane proteins like occludin, various claudins that directly control paracellular permeability, and the ‘Junctional Adhesion Molecules’ (JAMs). For establishing tight barriers TJ are essential but at the same time have to allow also selective permeability. For this, TJ need to be tightly regulated and controlled. This is organized by a variety of adaptor molecules, i.e., protein kinases, phosphatases and GTPases, which in turn are regulated and fine-tuned involving microRNAs (miRNAs). In this review we summarize available data on the role and targeting of miRNAs in the maintenance of epithelial and/or endothelial barriers.
Acknowledgments
We like to thank L. Greune (Institute of Infectiology – ZMBE, Münster) for excellent electron microscopy.
Funding
Our work has been supported in part by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG: GRK1409, SCHM770/15-1 and SFB1009 B03), a fellowship of the Medical Faculty Münster (to H.S.; FKZ: 0012), and the Cells-in-Motion Cluster of Excellence (EXC1003 – CiM), University of Münster, Germany.
Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest
No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.