Tight junctions represent one mode of cell-to-cell adhesion in epithelial or endothelial cell sheets , forming continuous seals around cells and serving as a physical barrier to prevent solutes and water from passing freely through the paracellular space. These junctions are comprised of sets of continuous networking strands in the outwardly facing cytoplasmic leaflet , with complementary grooves in the inwardly facing extracytoplasmic leaflet. The protein encoded by this intronless gene , a member of the claudin family , is an integral membrane protein and a component of tight junction strands. It is also a low-affinity receptor for Clostridium perfringens enterotoxin , and shares aa sequence similarity with a putative apoptosis-related protein found in rat. [provided by RefSeq , Jul 2008] ,
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