The unparalleled complexity of intercellular connections in the nervous system presents requirements for high levels of both specificity and diversity for the proteins that mediate cell adhesion. Here we describe recent advances toward understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie adhesive binding, specificity, and diversity for several well-characterized families of adhesion molecules in the nervous system. Although many families of adhesion proteins, including cadherins and immunoglobulin superfamily members, are utilized in neural and nonneural contexts, nervous system-specific diversification mechanisms, such as precisely regulated alternative splicing, provide an important means to enable their function in the complex context of the nervous system.

中文翻译：

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神经系统中的粘附分子：对功能和多样性的结构见解。

神经系统中细胞间连接的无与伦比的复杂性要求介导细胞粘附的蛋白质具有高水平的特异性和多样性。在这里，我们描述了了解神经机制中几个良好表征的黏附分子家族的基础，即黏合剂结合，特异性和多样性的分子机制的最新进展。尽管在神经和非神经环境中利用了许多粘附蛋白家族，包括钙粘着蛋白和免疫球蛋白超家族成员，但神经系统特有的多样化机制（例如精确调控的选择性剪接）提供了重要的手段，可使其在复杂的环境中发挥功能。神经系统。