A series of recent publications significantly advances our knowledge about the evolution and composition of septate junctions in arthropod and chordate species. These papers indicate that insect septate junctions share several structural and functional components with paranodal junctions, which join myelinating glial cells to axons in the vertebrate nervous system, and that both probably evolved from a common ancestral precursor.
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Departments of Biological Chemistry and Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. hortsch@umich.edu
