Regulation of Homophilic and Heterophilic Adhesion Among Classical Cadherins

121 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008.Finally, fluorescence imaging assessed cadherin clustering and actin organization in E-cadherin expressing cells cultured on E-, N-, and C-cadherin ectodomains. As expected, the formation of filamentous actin correlated with the Rac activation amplitudes in E-cadherin expressing cells. The results also showed that lateral cadherin clustering, which is thought to be an initial response to cadherin ligation, occurs in E-cadherin expressing cells as a result of both heterophilic and homophilic binding. However, I also showed that lateral cadherin clustering is not a cadherin-specific response. These results are important because they suggest that cadherin-dependent differences in intracellular signaling may play a greater role in cell sorting than the biophysical properties of bonds between ectodomain subtypes.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD