Tyrosine phosphorylation in desmosomes and hemidesmosomes of the corneal epithelium.

K Amino, M Takahashi, Y Honda, T Fujimoto

Department of Ophthalmology, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan.

The journal of histochemistry and cytochemistry : official journal of the Histochemistry Society 1996 Jan

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We examined the localization of phosphotyrosine (p-Tyr)-modified proteins in the normal corneal epithelium using affinity-purified rabbit anti-p-Tyr antibody. Normal rat cornea was fixed and semi-thin and ultra-thin frozen sections were prepared. Immunofluorescence microscopy showed that p-Tyr was distributed along the cell membrane of the corneal epithelium. Immunogold electron microscopy revealed that the labeling is exclusively localized in the desmosomes and hemidesmosomes. A fraction enriched with desmosomes was extracted from the bovine corneal epithelium and examined by Western blotting. Immunoblotting for p-Tyr showed eight prominent bands (290, 200, 190, 115, 85, 62, 50, and 47 kD) in the desmosomal fraction. The enrichment of p-Tyr in desmosomes and hemidesmosomes of the corneal epithelium suggests that these cell-to-cell and cell-to-substrate junctions are involved in signal transduction.

Citation

K Amino, M Takahashi, Y Honda, T Fujimoto. Tyrosine phosphorylation in desmosomes and hemidesmosomes of the corneal epithelium. The journal of histochemistry and cytochemistry : official journal of the Histochemistry Society. 1996 Jan;44(1):19-25