4.7 Article

Nectin-2 and N-cadherin interact through extracellular domains and induce apical accumulation of F-actin in apical constriction of Xenopus neural tube morphogenesis

Journal

DEVELOPMENT
Volume 137, Issue 8, Pages 1315-1325

Publisher

COMPANY OF BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/dev.043190

Keywords

Nectin-2; N-cadherin; Xenopus; Neural tube closure; Apical constriction; F-actin

Funding

  1. Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture of Japan
  2. NIH [RO1HD044764-06]

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Neural tube formation is one of the most dynamic morphogenetic processes of vertebrate development. However, the molecules regulating its initiation are mostly unknown. Here, we demonstrated that nectin-2, an immunoglobulin-like cell adhesion molecule, is involved in the neurulation of Xenopus embryos in cooperation with N-cadherin. First, we found that, at the beginning of neurulation, nectin-2 was strongly expressed in the superficial cells of neuroepithelium. The knockdown of nectin-2 impaired neural fold formation by attenuating F-actin accumulation and apical constriction, a cell-shape change that is required for neural tube folding. Conversely, the overexpression of nectin-2 in non-neural ectoderm induced ectopic apical constrictions with accumulated F-actin. However, experiments with domain-deleted nectin-2 revealed that the intracellular afadin-binding motif, which links nectin-2 and F-actin, was not required for the generation of the ectopic apical constriction. Furthermore, we found that nectin-2 physically interacts with N-cadherin through extracellular domains, and they cooperatively enhanced apical constriction by driving the accumulation of F-actin at the apical cell surface. Interestingly, the accumulation of N-cadherin at the apical surface of neuroepithelium was dependent on the presence of nectin-2, but that of nectin-2 was not affected by depletion of N-cadherin. We propose a novel mechanism of neural tube morphogenesis regulated by the two types of cell adhesion molecules.

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