TMEM87a/Elkin1, a component of a novel mechanoelectrical transduction pathway, modulates melanoma adhesion and migration
Abstract
Mechanoelectrical transduction is a cellular signalling pathway where physical stimuli are converted into electro-chemical signals by mechanically activated ion channels. We describe here the presence of mechanically activated currents in melanoma cells that are dependent on TMEM87a, which we have renamed Elkin1. Heterologous expression of this protein in PIEZO1-deficient cells, that exhibit no baseline mechanosensitivity, is sufficient to reconstitute mechanically activated currents. Melanoma cells lacking functional Elkin1 exhibit defective mechanoelectrical transduction, decreased motility and increased dissociation from organotypic spheroids. By analysing cell adhesion properties, we demonstrate that Elkin1 deletion is associated with increased cell-substrate adhesion and decreased homotypic cell-cell adhesion strength. We therefore conclude that Elkin1 supports a PIEZO1-independent mechanoelectrical transduction pathway and modulates cellular adhesions and regulates melanoma cell migration and cell-cell interactions.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data file has been provided for figures 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8. Proteomics data provided as supplementary table 1
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1138595)
- Boris Martinac
- Maté Biro
- Kate Poole
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB958,project A09)
- Gary R Lewin
- Kate Poole
National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1135974)
- Boris Martinac
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB958,project Z03)
- Murat Eravci
- Christoph Weise
Humboldt Foundation (Postdoctoral Fellowship)
- Mirko Moroni
Max Delbruck Center (Cecile Vogt Fellowship)
- Kate Poole
Department of Education, Australian Government (RTP scholarship)
- Amrutha Patkunarajah
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Baron Chanda, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Version history
- Received: November 4, 2019
- Accepted: March 28, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: March 31, 2020 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: April 1, 2020 (version 2)
- Version of Record published: April 21, 2020 (version 3)
- Version of Record updated: April 22, 2020 (version 4)
Copyright
© 2020, Patkunarajah et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 4,943
- views
-
- 653
- downloads
-
- 33
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Cancer Biology
- Genetics and Genomics
Relapse of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is highly aggressive and often treatment refractory. We analyzed previously published AML relapse cohorts and found that 40% of relapses occur without changes in driver mutations, suggesting that non-genetic mechanisms drive relapse in a large proportion of cases. We therefore characterized epigenetic patterns of AML relapse using 26 matched diagnosis-relapse samples with ATAC-seq. This analysis identified a relapse-specific chromatin accessibility signature for mutationally stable AML, suggesting that AML undergoes epigenetic evolution at relapse independent of mutational changes. Analysis of leukemia stem cell (LSC) chromatin changes at relapse indicated that this leukemic compartment underwent significantly less epigenetic evolution than non-LSCs, while epigenetic changes in non-LSCs reflected overall evolution of the bulk leukemia. Finally, we used single-cell ATAC-seq paired with mitochondrial sequencing (mtscATAC) to map clones from diagnosis into relapse along with their epigenetic features. We found that distinct mitochondrially-defined clones exhibit more similar chromatin accessibility at relapse relative to diagnosis, demonstrating convergent epigenetic evolution in relapsed AML. These results demonstrate that epigenetic evolution is a feature of relapsed AML and that convergent epigenetic evolution can occur following treatment with induction chemotherapy.
-
- Cancer Biology
- Cell Biology
Rapid recovery of proteasome activity may contribute to intrinsic and acquired resistance to FDA-approved proteasome inhibitors. Previous studies have demonstrated that the expression of proteasome genes in cells treated with sub-lethal concentrations of proteasome inhibitors is upregulated by the transcription factor Nrf1 (NFE2L1), which is activated by a DDI2 protease. Here, we demonstrate that the recovery of proteasome activity is DDI2-independent and occurs before transcription of proteasomal genes is upregulated but requires protein translation. Thus, mammalian cells possess an additional DDI2 and transcription-independent pathway for the rapid recovery of proteasome activity after proteasome inhibition.