{"doi":"10.7554/elife.62514","title":"Molecular mechanism for direct actin force-sensing by α-catenin","abstract":"The actin cytoskeleton mediates mechanical coupling between cells and their tissue microenvironments. The architecture and composition of actin networks are modulated by force; however, it is unclear how interactions between actin filaments (F-actin) and associated proteins are mechanically regulated. Here we employ both optical trapping and biochemical reconstitution with myosin motor proteins to show single piconewton forces applied solely to F-actin enhance binding by the human version of the essential cell-cell adhesion protein αE-catenin but not its homolog vinculin. Cryo-electron microscopy structures of both proteins bound to F-actin reveal unique rearrangements that facilitate their flexible C-termini refolding to engage distinct interfaces. Truncating α-catenin's C-terminus eliminates force-activated F-actin binding, and addition of this motif to vinculin confers force-activated binding, demonstrating that α-catenin's C-terminus is a modular detector of F-actin tension. Our studies establish that piconewton force on F-actin can enhance partner binding, which we propose mechanically regulates cellular adhesion through α-catenin.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":54420,"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":104,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9552,"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":255382,"name":"Santiago Espinosa de los Reyes","orcid":"0000-0003-4510-8296","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279311,"name":"Matthew J. Reynolds","orcid":"0000-0002-2501-9280","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279312,"name":"Rachel Leicher","orcid":"0000-0002-3187-1234","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279313,"name":"Shixin Liu","orcid":"0000-0003-4238-7066","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255384,"name":"Gregory M. Alushin","orcid":"0000-0001-7250-4484","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279310,"name":"Lin Mei","orcid":"0000-0002-5056-4547","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":92,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:03:43.037640Z","pmid":"32969337","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":[]}