Nature Communications (Dec 2020)

Metavinculin modulates force transduction in cell adhesion sites

  • Verena Kanoldt,
  • Carleen Kluger,
  • Christiane Barz,
  • Anna-Lena Schweizer,
  • Deepak Ramanujam,
  • Lukas Windgasse,
  • Stefan Engelhardt,
  • Anna Chrostek-Grashoff,
  • Carsten Grashoff

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20125-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Muscle cells express an adhesion molecule called metavinculin, which has been associated with cardiomyopathies. Here, the authors employed molecular tension sensors to reveal that metavinculin expression modulates cell adhesion mechanics and they develop a mouse model to demonstrate that the presence of metavinculin is not as critical for heart muscle function as previously thought.