Intercellular attachments between calcified collagenous tissue forming cells in the rat.
Osteoblasts of the young rat cranium, and cementoblasts and odontoblasts of young rat molars were prepared by ethanol freeze-fracture prior to critical point drying for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) as well as conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Critical point drying causes shrinkage which separates the lateral intercellular contacts between neighbours in the same sheet in the case of cementoblasts and osteoblasts, but not those between odontoblasts. These differences are considered to be of functional significance and need to be taken into consideration when formulating theories of calcium influx into the mineralizable matrix of the respective tissues.