Question

You are a scientist who studies an infectious disease called Bison Flu. When cells are infected with the virus, cellular morphology changes. You hypothesize that tight junction proteins “overact” when infected with this virus in order to pull cells closer together and allow the viruses to have easy access to neighboring cells. Design an experiment to prove that tight junction proteins that increase the “closeness” of cells are upregulated in the presence of Bison Flu. How will you prove that tight junction function has been altered in the presence of the virus?

Answer 1

Tight junction is consisting of several transmembrane proteins such as like claudins, occludin, junction adhesion molecule. These proteins get associated with peripheral protein like ZO-1 and altogether anchored the cell with cytoskeleton. Thus if a virus change the morphology of the tight juction or increase the closeness of the cells, we can check for the level of member proteins of the tight junction, Thus, if we look for the mRNA or protein expression level for claudin, occludin or ZO-1, it is supposed to get increased due to virus infection. So, we can check the mRNA level by real time PCR, and also expression of claudin, ZO-1 or occludin proteins ba western blot.