ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the lens communication literature from the whole organ to the molecular level partly to assess the very significant progress and also to identify the areas of conflict for future elucidation. The lens is an ideal system for studying the mechanisms underlying cellular communication for a number of reasons. It is, e.g., uniquely uniform in both the cellular and geometrical sense. The ability of calcium to uncouple lens fiber cells is extremely interesting in view of the fact that internal calcium increases dramatically in human cortical cataract. Several morphological studies have indicated that junctional complexes are formed between adjacent fiber and epithelial cells, T. M. Miller and D. A. Goodenough were the first to show that Lucifer Yellow injected into chick lens fiber cells flows quite freely into the epithelium. Through modern technology based on artificial membrane systems, it is possible to incorporate purified junctional proteins into lipid bilayers in order to observe and characterize individual junctional channel events.
