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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

cancer metastasis, zyxin, action dynamics, protein interactions

College

Life Sciences

Department

Physiology and Developmental Biology

Abstract

My research aims to elucidate the protein interactions at cell-cell contacts (adherens junctions or AJ’s) by studying the fluorescence recovery of three known AJ proteins (zyxin, VASP, and actin) after photobleaching. At AJ’s, zyxin interacts with VASP (Vasioukhin et al., 2000) which in turn encourages the polymerization of actin (Vasioukhin et al., 2000). Mutation of certain regions of zyxin may reveal their role in zyxin-VASP binding and regulation. The effects of altering VASP activity should be evident in actin turnover rate. In Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP), regions of cell-cell adhesions with fluorescently labeled zyxin, VASP, or actin are bleached with a high intensity laser. The time it takes for the regions of interest to reach half of their maximum fluorescence after bleaching (T1/2) provides clues as to how these proteins interact at the junction. Understanding normal AJ protein interactions may lead to models for how cell adhesion malfunctions in cancer metastasis.

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