Giant cadherins Fat and Dachsous self-bend to organize properly spaced intercellular junctions.

ABSTRACT: The cadherins Fat and Dachsous regulate cell polarity and proliferation via their heterophilic interactions at intercellular junctions. Their ectodomains are unusually large because of repetitive extracellular cadherin (EC) domains, which raises the question of how they fit in regular intercellular spaces. Cadherins typically exhibit a linear topology through the binding of Ca(2+) to the linker between the EC domains. Our electron-microscopic observations of mammalian Fat4 and Dachsous1 ectodomains, however, revealed that, although their N-terminal regions exhibit a linear configuration, the C-terminal regions are kinked with multiple hairpin-like bends. Notably, certain EC-EC linkers in Fat4 and Dachsous1 lost Ca(2+)-binding amino acids. When such non-Ca(2+)-binding linkers were substitut

SUBMITTER: Tsukasaki Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4234546 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature