RNAm EXPRESSION OF THE TIGHT JUNCTION IN QUIROPTERA

FERNÁNDEZ MARINONE,G.; BRUN, A.; CHEDIACK, JG.; GATICA-SOSA, CP.; TAVERNELLI, L; KARASOV, W; CAVIEDES-VIDAL, E

Congreso; Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo; 2013

It is well known that paracellular absortion in the intestines of flying animals is increased compared to non flying animals of the same body size, being involved in this via the tight junction proteins, integrated by claudins (cldn), junction adhesion molecule (JAM), occludin (ocld), and zonnula occludens-1 (ZO-1). In order to test this hypothesis we studied the level of expression of the following genes: Cldn 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 15, occludin, ZO-1 and Jam in insectivorous bats and mice, using Eef11 and -actin as reference genes. At first, we designed pairs of primers for bats for the genes of interest. The RNAm was isolated from intestinal samples (proximal, medial and distal, relative to pylorus), using RNAzol kit, from 5 individuals of Tadarida brasiliensis. Then we performed RT-qPCR reactions. We compared our results in bats with the RNAm levels of Mus musculus documented by Holmes in 2006, where we found differences between the levels of RNAm expression in cldn1 and cldn 5, but these results do not explain the greater paracelular absorption in bats, however, in the case of cldn 2 the level is surprisingly increased in the medial portion of T. brasiliensis, and this protein is the responsible of the pore size, giving a possible explanation of the higher paracelular absorption in bats.