Breakthrough in Epithelial Tissue Research Highlighted in Journal

Professor and Director of the Predoctoral Research Program Dr. Maria Kukuruzinska and her research team have made an important advance in the understanding of how epithelial tissues achieve functional maturity.

Formation of mature tissues involves the establishment of stable cell-cell contacts between adjacent cells through the organization of different adhesion complexes. These include E-cadherin-containing adherens junctions (AJs) that mediate cell-cell adhesion, and ZO-1-containing tight junctions (TJs), which determine the barrier function of epithelia.

In their most recent publication in Experimental Cell Research, Dr. Kukuruzinska and her team provide evidence that modification of E-cadherin with N-glycans control not only the maturation of AJs but also the assembly of TJs. They show that the reduced N-glycosylation status of E-cadherin drives the organization of mature AJs, which in turn, sequester protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) from the sites of TJs. The absence of PP2A renders the TJ proteins competent to assemble into functional junctions. This study highlights the relationship between the metabolic pathway of protein N-glycosylation and intercellular adhesion. In addition, it provides mechanistic insights into the well acknowledged but little understood dependence of TJ formation on AJ maturity.

The manuscript, titled, “Hypoglycosylated E-cadherin promotes the assembly of tight junctions through the recruitment of PP2A to adherens junctions,“ by former GSDM Research Associate Mihai Nita-Lazar, Dr. Ivan Rebustini, Dr. Janice Walker and Dr. Kukuruzinska, is available online at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/yexcr.