Wait for Force

We all need a little nudge sometimes, and a cautionary hand on the shoulder at others. Our cells are the same, and physical forces can dictate when they take action. Cells of the intestine renew rapidly, as new cells replace old when the physical burden of food processing wears them out. But how the reserve supply knows when to divide and develop from starter cells into mature absorptive cells isn’t well understood. Researchers examined the intestines of flies lacking vinculin – a protein important in determining cell fate and sensing mechanical forces. These flies developed enlarged guts (pictured, bottom) with excessive cell turnover (green) compared to normal flies (top), showing vinculin’s role in keeping precursor cells back until physical forces between cells are sufficient to trigger the need for a refresh. Understanding this mechanical management could help explain how changes in the process are linked to ageing, inflammation, and disease.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image by Jerome Bohere, work by Jerome Bohere, Buffy L Eldridge-Thomas and Golnar Kolahgar

Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, Downing St, University of Cambridge, UK

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, October 2022

Image of the Week - August 28, 2017

CIL:38985 - http://www.cellimagelibrary.org/images/38985

Description: Fluorescent micrograph of rat embryo fibroblast cell growing in serum stained to reveal actin stress fibres (red) and vinculin (component of focal adhesions) in green/yellow.

Authors: Catherine Nobes and Alan Hall

Tiny Tubes

Inside every cell of your body there’s a complex biological ‘scaffold’ made of tiny tubes, known as the cytoskeleton. These tubes are made up of billions of actin molecules, which come together in a similar way that Lego bricks click together to make large, stable structures. However, actin doesn’t act alone. Other molecules help the actin tubes to assemble, giving them different structural properties depending on the job they need to do inside the cell. One of these, called vinculin, plays a particularly important role in building strong yet flexible actin bundles at the sites where cells join together. Researchers have been growing actin tubes in the lab, altering the proportions of actin (top row) and vinculin (bottom row) in the mixture to see what happens to the resulting structures. Their findings help to explain how cells reorganise their internal scaffolding to stick to each other and build a body.

Written by Kat Arney

Image from work by Rajaa Boujemaa-Paterski and colleagues

Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, November 2020

Definition

Vinculin ist ein intrazelluläres Protein, welches durch Verknüpfung von intrazellulären Proteinen des Cytoskeletts mit Integrinen die Adhäsion von Zellen an andere Zellen bzw. an Strukturen der Extrazellulärmatrix erlaubt.