Journal
JOURNAL OF CELL SCIENCE
Volume 119, Issue 1, Pages 66-74Publisher
COMPANY BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jcs.02719
Keywords
cell adhesion; cadherins; biophysics; single-molecule force spectroscopy
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Funding
- NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE [R01CA101135, R56CA101135] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF GENERAL MEDICAL SCIENCES [R01GM075305] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NCI NIH HHS [CA101135] Funding Source: Medline
- NIGMS NIH HHS [GM075305] Funding Source: Medline
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Cadherins are ubiquitous cell surface molecules that are expressed in virtually all solid tissues and localize at sites of cell-cell contact. Cadherins form a large and diverse family of adhesion molecules, which play a crucial role in a multitude of cellular processes, including cell-cell adhesion, motility, and cell sorting in maturing organs and tissues, presumably because of their different binding capacity and specificity. Here, we develop a method that probes the biochemical and biophysical properties of the binding interactions between cadherins expressed on the surface of living cells, at the single-molecule level. Single-molecule force spectroscopy reveals that classical cadherins, N-cadherin and E-cadherin, form bonds that display adhesion specificity, and a pronounced difference in adhesion force and reactive compliance, but not in bond lifetime. Moreover, their potentials of interaction, derived from force-spectroscopy measurements, are qualitatively different when comparing the single-barrier energy potential for the dissociation of an N-cadherin-N-cadherin bond with the double-barrier energy potential for an E-cadherin-E-cadherin bond. Together these results suggest that N-cadherin and E-cadherin molecules form homophilic bonds between juxtaposed cells that have significantly different kinetic and micromechanical properties.
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