The mechanisms by which catenins regulate cadherin function are not fully understood, and the precise function of p120 catenin (p120ctn) has remained particularly elusive. In microvascular endothelial cells, p120ctn colocalized extensively with cell surface VE-cadherin, but failed to colocalize with VE-cadherin that had entered intracellular degradative compartments. To test the possibility tha...

Cadherin-based cell-cell contacts are prominent sites for phosphotyrosine signaling, being enriched in tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins and tyrosine kinases and phosphatases. The functional interplay between cadherin adhesion and tyrosine kinase signaling, however, is complex and incompletely understood. In this report we tested the hypothesis that cadherin adhesion activates c-Src signaling an...

In vascular endothelium, adherens junctions between endothelial cells are composed of VE-cadherin (vascular endothelial cadherin), an adhesive receptor that is crucial for the proper assembly of vascular structures and the maintenance of vascular integrity. As a classical cadherin, VE-cadherin links endothelial cells together by homophilic interactions mediated by its extracellular part and ass...

N-cadherin plays a key role in axonal outgrowth and synaptogenesis, but how neurons initiate and remodel N-cadherin-based adhesions remains unclear. We addressed this issue with a semiartificial system consisting of N-cadherin coated microspheres adhering to cultured neurons transfected for N-cadherin-GFP. Using optical tweezers, we show that growth cones are particularly reactive to N-cadherin...

The cadherin family of calcium-dependent cell adhesion molecules plays an important part in the organization of cell adhesion and tissue segregation during development. The expression pattern and the binding specificity of each cadherin are of principal importance for its role in morphogenesis. B-Cadherin and LCAM, two chicken cadherins, have similar, but not identical, spatial and temporal pat...

E-cadherin is a transmembrane glycoprotein that mediates calcium-dependent, homotypic cell-cell adhesion and plays an important role in maintaining the normal phenotype of epithelial cells. Disruption of E-cadherin activity in epithelial cells correlates with formation of metastatic tumors. Decreased adhesive function may be implemented in a number of ways including: (a) decreased expression of...

R-cadherin is a newly identified member of the cadherin family of cell adhesion receptors. The expression of R-cadherin in early chicken embryos was studied using affinity-purified antibodies to this molecule, comparing it with that of N-cadherin. Immunoblot analysis of various organs of 10.5-day embryos showed that R-cadherin is most abundantly expressed in the retina and brain. Immunostaining...

UNLABELLED Cadherin-11 (CDH11) is a member of the cadherin superfamily mainly expressed in osteoblasts but not in epithelial cells. However, prostate cancer cells with a propensity for bone metastasis express high levels of cadherin-11 and reduced levels of E-cadherin. Downregulation of cadherin-11 inhibits interaction of prostate cancer cells with osteoblasts in vitro and homing of prostate ca...

E-cadherin is a key cell-cell adhesion molecule but the impact of receptor density and the precise contribution of individual cadherin ectodomains in promoting cell adhesion are only incompletely understood. Investigating these mechanisms would benefit from artificial adhesion substrates carrying different cadherin ectodomains at defined surface density. We therefore developed a quantitative E-...