Cldn10 - claudin 10

This intronless gene encodes a member of the claudin family. Claudins are integral membrane proteins and components of tight unction strands. Tight junction strands serve as a physical barrier to prevent solutes and water from passing freely through the paracellular space between epithelial or endothelial cell sheets, and also play critical roles in maintaining cell polarity and signal transductions. Six alternatively spliced transcript variants have been identified, which encode different isoforms with distinct electric charge of the first extracellular loop and with or without the fourth transmembrane region. These isoforms exhibit distinct localization and function in paracellular anion or cation permeability. [provided by RefSeq, Aug 2010]