{"doi":"10.1101/2020.05.22.111443","title":"Epithelial Cell-like Elasticity Modulates E-cadherin Adhesion Organization","abstract":"Abstract E-cadherin adhesions are essential for cell-to-cell cohesion and mechanical coupling between epithelial cells and reside in a micro-environment that comprises the adjoining epithelial cells. While E-cadherin has been shown to be a mechanosensor, it is unknown if E-cadherin adhesions can differentially sense stiffness within the range of that of epithelial cells. A survey of literature shows that epithelial cells’ Young’s moduli of elasticity lie predominantly in the sub kPa to few kPa range, with cancer cells often being softer than non-cancerous ones. Here, we devised oriented E-cadherin-coated soft silicone substrates with sub kPa or few kPa elasticity, but with similar viscous moduli, and found that E-cadherin adhesions differentially organize depending on the magnitude of epithelial cell-like elasticity. Linearly shaped E-cadherin adhesions associated with radially oriented actin, but not irregularly shaped E-cadherin adhesions associated with circumferential actin foci, were much more numerous on 2.4 kPa E-cadherin substrates compared to 0.3 kPa E-cadherin substrates. However, the total amount of E-cadherin in both types of adhesions taken together was similar on the 0.3 kPa and 2.4 kPa E-cadherin substrates, across many cells. Furthermore, while the average extent of nuclear recruitment of the mechanoresponsive transcription factor YAP on the 0.3 kPa E-cadherin substrate was undiminished relative to that on the 2.4 kPa substrate, a fraction of cells on the softer substrate displayed relatively high levels of YAP nuclear recruitment. Our results show that E-cadherin adhesions can be regulated by epithelial cell-like elasticity and have significant implications for disease states like carcinomas characterized by altered epithelial cell elasticity.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":126694,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9528,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":574582,"name":"Siddharth Chatterji","orcid":"0000-0001-5555-7007","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":574583,"name":"Venkat Maruthamuthu","orcid":"0000-0002-3470-5274","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":575218,"name":"Mohamad Eftekharjoo","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:15:27.226519Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}