The leaks get fixed in a sudden burst of activity that enables rapidly developing embryos (frogs) to just go on developing:
“We discovered that cells are normally very proactive when it comes to maintaining the barrier,” Stephenson said. “This repair mechanism happens quickly and is carried out very locally, affecting only a small part of the cell junction, rather than multiple cells or the whole tissue.
“We think that this proactive approach is what gives our cells the flexibility to move and change shape without compromising the barrier function of the tissue. Diseases involving a leaky barrier might be due to a faulty repair mechanism or the cells’ inability to detect leaks and flip the switch.”
Stephenson and other members of the Miller Lab are now working to determine how the switch gets flipped to turn on Rho at the right time and place and to identify other proteins that are part of the cellular repair crew to plug leaky biological barriers. – “Rho flares repair local tight junction leaks” Developmental Cell (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2019.01.016 , https://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/fulltext/S1534-5807(19)30044-9 (paywall)
University of Michigan, “New live-imaging technique reveals cellular repair crew plugging leaky biological barrier” at Phys.org
Such intricate systems just happen to fall into place in cells via Darwinian evolution even though we know that nothing else happens that way without intelligent direction. Fancy that.
See also: Researchers: How The Immune System “Thinks”
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