The ubiquitin-proteasome system regulates focal adhesions at the leading edge of migrating cells

  1. Anjali Teckchandani
  2. Jonathan A Cooper  Is a corresponding author
  1. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

Abstract

Cell migration requires the cyclical assembly and disassembly of focal adhesions. Adhesion induces phosphorylation of focal adhesion proteins, including Cas (Crk-associated substrate/p130Cas/BCAR1). However, Cas phosphorylation stimulates adhesion turnover. This raises the question of how adhesion assembly occurs against opposition from phospho-Cas. Here we show that suppressor of cytokine signaling 6 (SOCS6) and Cullin 5, two components of the CRL5SOCS6 ubiquitin ligase, inhibit Cas-dependent focal adhesion turnover at the front but not rear of migrating epithelial cells. The front focal adhesions contain phospho-Cas which recruits SOCS6. If SOCS6 cannot access focal adhesions, or cullins or the proteasome are inhibited, adhesion disassembly is stimulated. This suggests that the localized targeting of phospho-Cas within adhesions by CRL5SOCS6 and concurrent cullin and proteasome activity provide a negative feedback loop, ensuring that adhesion assembly predominates over disassembly at the leading edge. By this mechanism, ubiquitination provides a new level of spatio-temporal control over cell migration.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Anjali Teckchandani

    Division of Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  2. Jonathan A Cooper

    Division of Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, United States
    For correspondence
    jcooper@fhcrc.org
    Competing interests
    Jonathan A Cooper, Reviewing editor, eLife.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8626-7827

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01 GM109463)

  • Jonathan A Cooper

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Roger J Davis, University of Massachusetts Medical School, United States

Version history

  1. Received: May 1, 2016
  2. Accepted: September 21, 2016
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: September 22, 2016 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: November 2, 2016 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2016, Teckchandani & Cooper

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,691
    views
  • 633
    downloads
  • 27
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Anjali Teckchandani
  2. Jonathan A Cooper
(2016)
The ubiquitin-proteasome system regulates focal adhesions at the leading edge of migrating cells
eLife 5:e17440.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.17440

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.17440

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    Jun Yang, Shitian Zou ... Xiaochun Bai
    Research Article

    Quiescence (G0) maintenance and exit are crucial for tissue homeostasis and regeneration in mammals. Here, we show that methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (Mecp2) expression is cell cycle-dependent and negatively regulates quiescence exit in cultured cells and in an injury-induced liver regeneration mouse model. Specifically, acute reduction of Mecp2 is required for efficient quiescence exit as deletion of Mecp2 accelerates, while overexpression of Mecp2 delays quiescence exit, and forced expression of Mecp2 after Mecp2 conditional knockout rescues cell cycle reentry. The E3 ligase Nedd4 mediates the ubiquitination and degradation of Mecp2, and thus facilitates quiescence exit. A genome-wide study uncovered the dual role of Mecp2 in preventing quiescence exit by transcriptionally activating metabolic genes while repressing proliferation-associated genes. Particularly disruption of two nuclear receptors, Rara or Nr1h3, accelerates quiescence exit, mimicking the Mecp2 depletion phenotype. Our studies unravel a previously unrecognized role for Mecp2 as an essential regulator of quiescence exit and tissue regeneration.

    1. Cancer Biology
    2. Cell Biology
    Stefanie Schmieder
    Insight

    Mutations in the gene for β-catenin cause liver cancer cells to release fewer exosomes, which reduces the number of immune cells infiltrating the tumor.