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Published September 15, 2011 | Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Caldesmon regulates actin dynamics to influence cranial neural crest migration in Xenopus

Abstract

Caldesmon (CaD) is an important actin modulator that associates with actin filaments to regulate cell morphology and motility. Although extensively studied in cultured cells, there is little functional information regarding the role of CaD in migrating cells in vivo. Here we show that nonmuscle CaD is highly expressed in both premigratory and migrating cranial neural crest cells of Xenopus embryos. Depletion of CaD with antisense morpholino oligonucleotides causes cranial neural crest cells to migrate a significantly shorter distance, prevents their segregation into distinct migratory streams, and later results in severe defects in cartilage formation. Demonstrating specificity, these effects are rescued by adding back exogenous CaD. Interestingly, CaD proteins with mutations in the Ca^(2+)-calmodulin–binding sites or ErK/Cdk1 phosphorylation sites fail to rescue the knockdown phenotypes, whereas mutation of the PAK phosphorylation site is able to rescue them. Analysis of neural crest explants reveals that CaD is required for the dynamic arrangements of actin and, thus, for cell shape changes and process formation. Taken together, these results suggest that the actin-modulating activity of CaD may underlie its critical function and is regulated by distinct signaling pathways during normal neural crest migration.

Additional Information

© 2011 Nie et al. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). Two months after publication it is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0). Submitted February 25, 2011. Revised July 15, 2011. Accepted July 21, 2011. Published online before print July 27, 2011. This work was supported by DE017911 and HD037105 from the National Institutes of Health to M.B.F. and by a 2011 Research Grant from Kangwon National University to Y.K.

Attached Files

Published - Nie2011p15883Mol_Biol_Cell.pdf

Supplemental Material - CombinedSupMats.pdf

Supplemental Material - mc-E11-02-0165-s04.mov

Supplemental Material - mc-E11-02-0165-s05.mov

Supplemental Material - mc-E11-02-0165-s06.mov

Supplemental Material - mc-E11-02-0165-s07.mov

Supplemental Material - mc-E11-02-0165-s08.mov

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August 19, 2023
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