A role for E-cadherin in ensuring cohesive migration of a heterogeneous population of non-epithelial cells

Kyra Campbell () and Jordi Casanova ()
Additional contact information
Kyra Campbell: Institut de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona (CSIC)
Jordi Casanova: Institut de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona (CSIC)

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Collective cell migration is a key process underlying the morphogenesis of many organs as well as tumour invasion, which very often involves heterogeneous cell populations. Here we investigated how such populations can migrate cohesively in the Drosophila posterior midgut, comprised of epithelial and mesenchymal cells and show a novel role for the epithelial adhesion molecule E-cadherin (E-Cad) in mesenchymal cells. Despite a lack of junctions at the ultrastructure level, reducing E-Cad levels causes mesenchymal cells to detach from one another and from neighbouring epithelial cells; as a result, coordination between the two populations is lost. Moreover, Bazooka and recycling mechanisms are also required for E-Cad accumulation in mesenchymal cells. These results indicate an active role for E-Cad in mediating cohesive and ordered migration of non-epithelial cells, and discount the notion of E-Cad as just an epithelial feature that has to be switched off to enable migration of mesenchymal cells.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8998 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms8998

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8998

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().