Activation of Rho-kinase and focal adhesion kinase regulates the organization of stress fibers and focal adhesions in the central part of fibroblasts
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Cell Biology, Molecular Biology
- Keywords
- Rho-kinase, focal adhesion kinase, stress fiber, focal adhesion, tyrosine phosphorylation
- Copyright
- © 2017 Katoh
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Activation of Rho-kinase and focal adhesion kinase regulates the organization of stress fibers and focal adhesions in the central part of fibroblasts. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3297v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3297v1
Abstract
Specific regulation and activation of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) are thought to be important for focal adhesion formation, and activation of Rho-kinase has been suggested to play a role in determining the effects of FAK on the formation of stress fibers and focal adhesions. To clarify the role of FAK in stress fiber formation and focal adhesion organization, we examined the formation of new stress fibers and focal adhesions by activation of Rho-kinase in FAK knockout (FAK–/–) fibroblasts. FAK–/– cells were elliptical in shape, and showed reduced numbers of stress fibers and focal adhesions in the central part of the cells along with large focal adhesions in the peripheral regions. Activation of Rho-kinase in FAK–/– cells transiently increased the actin filaments in the cell center, but these did not form typical thick stress fibers. Moreover, only plaque-like structures as the origins of newly formed focal adhesions were observed in the center of the cell. Furthermore, introduction of an exogenous GFP-labeled FAK gene into FAK–/– cells resulted in increased numbers of stress fibers and focal adhesions in the center of the cells, which showed typical fibroblast morphology. These results indicated that FAK plays an important role in the formation of stress fibers and focal adhesions as well as in regulation of cell shape and morphology with the activation of Rho-kinase.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.