Denis Wirtz, Johns Hopkins, Focal Adhesion Proteins in 3D Cancer Cell Motility

Main points:

• What we know about cancer motility in 2D is not predictive of what happens in 3D
• Looking for factors which predict motility in 3D
• Protusion activity is the best predictor
• Not true in 2D
• 3D Motility requires
• integrins
• MMPs
• actomyosin inhibition
• FA proteins play a role in 3D motility (but not in 2D)
• Normal motility: random walk
• Zyxin: causes occilitory motion

For exploration: can we predict protusion activity from transcription or mutation information?

See:
Fraley et al., Nature Cell Biology 2010
Bloom et al., Biophys. J. 2010