W J Nelson's research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

... Therefore, the amount of SPTAN1 appears to be essential for the strength of cell-cell interactions. Fittingly, the involvement of SPTAN1 in adhesion processes and establishing cell-cell contact has been described by several groups [20,[36][37][38][39]. In the context of tumor aggressiveness, we speculate that high SPTAN1 expression counteracts metastasis by ensuring epithelial cohesion and tight junctional integrity. ...

... However, what confers the highly selective localisation of APC clusters to only a few actively migrating membrane protrusions is not clear (Näthke et al., 1996b). Phosphorylation of APC by GSK3β can cause APC to dissociate from microtubules and it is possible that APC inactivation at specific locations is involved in restricting the accumulation of APC to certain sites (Manneville and Hall, 2003; Näthke et al., 1996b; Zumbrunn et al., 2001). The ability of APC to cluster at specific membrane protrusions requires its N-terminal domain, which binds to KAP3A and is also involved in the ability of APC to self-associate via N-terminal coiled-coil domains; however, this particular self-interaction is constitutive and more than one mechanism for self-association must be invoked to explain the formation of such large and dynamic clusters in specific areas of cells (Joslyn et al., 1993). ...

... Although no causative treatment preventing formation and enlargement of renal cysts is available at present, those bioassays have opened up the possibility of defining new therapeutic avenues [8][9][10][11]. Among the various cell culture approaches the MDCK cell line (Madin-Darby canine kidney) has been extensively used as an analogue model of pathological cyst formation in studies investigating the establishment of cell polarity [12], cell-matrix interactions [13] and transepithelial transport [14]. Nevertheless, results obtained with such an in vitro model are difficult to extrapolate to the complex in vivo situation of PKD due to the absence of homologous animals for comparative studies. ...

... The "identity" of the normal polarized epithelial cell is fundamentally tied to its ability, along with its neighbors, to establish an intact mucosal sheet with directional flow of ions, nutrients and receptor-dependent signals. At its most basic level, a polarized epithelium requires the maintenance of apical and basolateral membranes with distinct characteristics and segregation of functional channels, transporters, receptors and adhesion molecules in defined apical and basolateral zones separated by intercellular adherens and tight junctions 9,10 . Some epithelia, such as in the kidney, are relatively stable, but others, such as those lining the gut, are under constant renewal. ...

... Some membrane proteins may achieve polarity by selective retention at the apical or basolateral surface. Although less well understood, this polarity may reflect interactions with extracellular ligands or with intracellular scaffolds, such as cytoskeletal elements or arrays of PDZ domain-containing proteins [35,[49][50][51]. As described and discussed below, this is also the case of the epithelial Na + ,K + -ATPase, which is retained at the lateral membrane domain due to trans adhesion of its β 1 subunits on neighboring cells. ...

... Durch den schnellen und flexiblen Auf-und Abbau der Aktinfilamente werden aber auch dynamische Prozesse wie Zellform und -motilität (Hall und Nobes, 2000;Parsons et al., 2010), Phagozytose (Hall und Nobes, 2000), Proliferation und Differenzierung (Tsang et al., 2012a), Zellteilung und die Morphogenese während der embryonalen Entwicklung (Lee und Dominguez, 2010) ermöglicht. (Parsons et al., 2010;Vasioukhin et al., 2000) und Desmosomen Pasdar und Li, 1993;Pasdar et al., 1991). Durch Pemphigus-Autoantikörper wird die Anordnung des kortikalen Aktingürtels zerstört (Gliem et al., 2010;Jennings et al., 2011) (Waschke et al., 2006;Spindler, 2008), was in vitro im Adhäsionsverlust der Keratinozyten, der Depletion von Dsg3 und Fragmentierung von Dsg1, sowie der Desorganisation des kortikalen Aktin-Zytoskeletts resultiert (Spindler et al., 2007). ...

... Cadherins represent a multigene family of Ca 2 þ -dependent glycoproteins mediating cell–cell adhesion processes. Apart from the establishment of an epithelial cell polarization and the formation of robust cell–cell contacts, the zonula adherens, cadherins are responsible for cell proliferation as well as for the transfer of signals for cell differentiation (Takeichi, 1995; Geiger and Ayalon, 1992; Wollner et al., 1992). Classical cadherins consist of three domains, an extracellular domain mediating cell–cell adhesion via a zipper like mechanism, a hydrophobic transmembrane domain and a highly conserved cytoplasmic tail. ...

... In Drosophila, E-cadherin is clustered primarily in an apical-lateral ring with Baz, rather than uniformly spreading along the lateral membrane (Fig. 1F), suggesting that membrane trafficking of Ecadherin may be apically directed in this organism, possibly via polarised microtubules and the exocyst complex [123,126,133,[143][144][145][146]. In mammalian cells, Ecadherin appears to traffic primarily through the laterally directed AP1-dependent pathway to the lateral membrane, [129,[147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154], where it then localises with PARD3B. In Drosophila, E-cadherin can also traffic via AP-1 in nonepithelial germline cells that lack an apical-basal axis or Baz expression [155]. ...

... Twenty-four hours after transfection, siRNA was effective and E cadherin expression levels decreased drastically as expected given its half-life time of around 5 hours (Shore and Nelson, 1991). In control cells, the band corresponding to the mature form of E cadherin increased and the one corresponding to the precursor decreased, as seen previously, starting from 48 hours. ...

... MDCK cells A) express the cell-cell adhesion factor E-cadherin, which has long been associated with epithelial identity, and B) are one of the few cultured cell types that effectively epithelialize [47,48]. We therefore investigated the question of how cell-cell adhesion contributes to the transition from Immature to Intermediate architecture. ...