Feedback interactions between cell-cell adherens junctions and cytoskeletal dynamics in newt lung epithelial cells.

ABSTRACT: To test how cell-cell contacts regulate microtubule (MT) and actin cytoskeletal dynamics, we examined dynamics in cells that were contacted on all sides with neighboring cells in an epithelial cell sheet that was undergoing migration as a wound-healing response. Dynamics were recorded using time-lapse digital fluorescence microscopy of microinjected, labeled tubulin and actin. In fully contacted cells, most MT plus ends were quiescent; exhibiting only brief excursions of growth and shortening and spending 87.4% of their time in pause. This contrasts MTs in the lamella of migrating cells at the noncontacted leading edge of the sheet in which MTs exhibit dynamic instability. In the contacted rear and side edges of these migrating cells, a majority of MTs were also quiescent, indicating that

SUBMITTER: Waterman-Storer CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC14933 | biostudies-literature | 2000 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature