Shoichiro Tsukita: a life exploring the molecular architecture of the tight junction

On December 11, 2005, Shoichiro Tsukita died at the young age of 52, after 14 months of treatment for cancer. Early in his career, Tsukita succeeded in isolating and purifying the adherens junction with his wife Sachiko, an accomplishment that he followed up with an impressive series of discoveries of cell adhesion and cytoskeletal molecules, including what may have been his greatest contribution to the field, the identification of occludin and the claudin family of molecules, which were watershed discoveries in the study of the molecular nature of tight junctions.