Cell adhesion occurs when a cell attaches to surrounding cells, cell substrate, or the extracellular matrix. These connections are made possible with the help of adhesion molecules. The interactions occur between transmembrane cell-adhesion receptors, adaptor proteins, and cell junctions. One important protein that assists in cell adhesion interactions is vinculin. The cytoskeletal protein vinculin can be found in focal adhesions, tight gap junctions, and adherens junctions in mammalian cells. Vinculin aids in transducing and regulating mechanical forces that occur during different types of adhesion events. There are two conformational states that vinculin can adopt, active and inactive. In the active conformation, vinculin will bind to a variety of other adhesion proteins regulating both cell-cell adhesion and cell-matrix adhesion. Since vinculin plays a central role in the adhesion complexes, it is likely it played a role in the evolution of multicellularity. In order to investigate the importance of vinculin in primitive adhesion complexes, we will use the single-celled eukaryote, Monosiga brevicollis. Monosiga brevicollis is a great model organism for evolutionary studies of multicellularity because it is single cellular, but also undergoes a colony forming phase, where cell-cell interactions are important. Understanding the role of vinculin in primitive adhesions may provide crucial evidence for the origins of multicellularity.

Understanding origins of multicellularity by protein analysis of Monosiga brevicollis vinculin

255th National Meeting (2018)

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