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| Monterotondo,
Tuesday, 25 January 2005 |
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| How do cells travel through our bodies? |
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| EMBL researcher Dr. Walter Witke | |
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| Neural
crest cells with a green nuclear marker. Cells
expressing n-cofilin, as seen above, migrate
out of the tissue. |
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| Very few n-cofilin deficient cells are found outside the tissue, which indicates a reduction in migration. | |
Press
Release 25 January 2005 [PDF]
Italiano
Scientists gain ground in understanding cell motility
One of the most basic yet least understood processes
in our bodies is how cells crawl along tissues.
This behavior is essential to the formation of an
embryo and other processes, but it must be tightly
controlled. A disturbance can lead to the spread
of cancer cells or diseases like Spina bifida and
Lissencephaly, in which cells fail to reach their
proper destinations. Scientists from the European
Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] in Monterotondo
have now made a significant step forward in understanding
cell motility.
The researchers discovered that a
molecule called n-cofilin is critical for regulating
cell movement. Most cells in the body are normally
locked to their neighbors, tightly embedded in a
tissue. Their connections to their neighbors depend
on fibers built from long chains of a protein called
actin. For an embryo to form properly, certain types
of cells have to immigrate to new locations, where
they help to form the face, muscles, and skin.
Before cells 'set sail', the actin fibers that bind
them to their neighbors are untied and recycled.
This not only allows the cells to move, but also
changes their form, because actin fibers give the
cell its basic shape. Cells carefully regulate the
breakdown and assembly of actin fibers because if
they are cast off at the wrong time and place, for
example in a tumor, cancerous cells may spread throughout
the body and form metastases.
It was already known
that n-cofilin can break down actin fibers in the
test tube, but Walter Witke and colleagues Christine
Gurniak and Emerald Perlas wanted to know if it
played a role in cell migration in the mouse.
One stunning example of where the movement of a
small group of cells is crucial occurs during the
formation of an animal embryo. As the brain and
head begin to take shape, a group of cells multiplies
to form a long strip along the back of the embryo.
This eventually makes a structure that looks like
a piece of paper whose edges have slightly curled
inwards. The curl is called the neural crest, and
if cells produce n-cofilin, the edges will grow
together, eventually becoming the head and the spine.
The researchers studied what happens in a strain
of mouse in which n-cofilin stops functioning at
the time the neural crest forms. They found that
the edges of the curl cannot move together and fuse,
so the head and spine remain open. This closely
resembles Spina bifida, a condition that leads to
severe disabilities in humans and is frequently
fatal. The Monterotondo group showed that n-cofilin
has to be present for neural crest cells to be untied
from their neighbors and to crawl away.
"This gives us a new way to explore cell migration
in the mouse," Witke says. "Mouse physiology
is very close to that of humans, so by identifying
the molecules involved in this process, we're one
step closer to understanding human diseases that
result from uncontrolled cell migration. N-cofilin
is not only essential for cells to move, but for
shifting them from a resting to a migrating state.
Therefore, blocking the activity of n-cofilin in
cancer might be an interesting strategy to try to
restrict the growth and spread of malignant tumors."
Press Contact Trista Dawson
EMBL Press Officer, European Molecular Biology Laboratory,
Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 [0] 6221 3878452
E-mail: trista.dawson@embl.de |
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