Intercellular Junctions in Developing Rat Submandibular Glands (I) Tight Junctions

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Abstract
The development of tight junctions in rat submandibular gland from the sixteenth day of gestatin to the fourteenth day after birth was studied by freeze-fracture and tracing methods. Tracer studies showed that focal fusions were freely penetrated by lanthanum on the eighteenth day of gestation, though they progressively lost permeability to the tracer after the day of birth. In freeze-fracture replicas, tight junctions were revealed as: (1) maculae occludenies, which were most numerous on the sixteenth day of gestation, (2) zonulae occludentes, which were far more numerous post-natally than on the sixteenth gestational day, and (3) fasciae occludentes, which showed a remarkable increase in number by the nineteenth gestational day. A six-stage development-formation process, beginning with de novo furrowing on the E face and elevation on the P face, and concluding with the degradation and reorganization of fasciae occludentes into zonulae occludentes, was clearly observed. From results of tracer studies, there seems little possibility that zonulae occludentes of the nineteenth gestational day contribute to barrier function.

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