T he actin cytoskeleton is the main driver of cell motility, an essential function of normal body tissues. However, the same processes are also at the heart of cancer cell metastasis and invasion. Understanding the normal regulation of actin-dependent cell motil-ity and how this is altered in cancer cells should leave us better equipped to tackle the disease. Laura Machesky's research is aimed ...

T his year’s Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Knee Society includes selected manuscripts originally presented at the 2013 Knee Society Members Meeting held in Toronto, Canada in September 2013, as well as those from the 2014 Open Scientific Meeting of the Knee Society held in New Orleans in March 2014. Each paper in these Proceedings has undergone rigorous peer-review to ensure that the...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The kinematics of an intact knee joint and that of a knee replacement have been studied in many research centres. In the 1987 radiographic study, Bradley, Goodfellow and O'Connor reported the movement of a polyethylene insert in patients with unicompartmental Oxford knee replacement. Views with the knee at full extension and 90° of flexion were obtained and the movement of ...

Background: SCAR/WAVE proteins couple signalling to actin polymerization, and are thus fundamental to the formation of pseudopods and lamellipods. They are controlled as part of a fivemembered complex that includes the tiny HSPC300 protein. It is not known why SCAR/WAVE is found in such a large assembly, but in Dictyostelium the four larger subunits have different, clearly delineated functions....

The crawling movement of eukaryotic cells requires establishment of cell polarity, extension of the leading edge, attachment to the substratum, and retraction of the cell body. Each of these events depends on the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton that are orchestrated by a host of signaling molecules and actin-binding proteins. Indeed, amoeboid cell motility involves so many biochemical compon...

The crawling movement of eukaryotic cells requires establishment of cell polarity, extension of the leading edge, attachment to the substratum, and retraction of the cell body. Each of these events depends on the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton that are orchestrated by a host of signaling molecules and actin-binding proteins. Indeed, amoeboid cell motility involves so many biochemical compon...

The purpose of this study was to determine whether distraction osteogenesis can be used to treat hypertrophic nonunion associated with angular deformity and shortening after Coventry style high tibial osteotomy. Five consecutive patients were retrospectively reviewed. In all cases, the alignment had collapsed into excessive varus or valgus and leg length discrepancy was present. The leg length ...

which binds to F-actin in vitro and may also be important Cell migration is essential throughout the life of multicelfor multimerization (Figure 1 and Lanier and Gertler, lular organisms, but is especially important during devel2000). opment. Two studies in this issue of Cell shed light on Ena/VASP proteins were first implicated directly in the molecular pathways coordinating cell motility and ...

by regulating all of these activities. In particular, families of proline-rich proteins, the WASP/SCAR and Ena/VASP families, play crucial roles in actin dynamics, and are Song Hu and Louis F. Reichardt* Department of Physiology Howard Hughes Medical Institute University of California believed to act, at least in part, by binding and thereby regulating Profilin’s activity (Figure 1). In additio...

We have previously reported that activation of adenylyl cyclase by chemoattractant receptors in Dictyostelium requires, in addition to a heterotrimeric G-protein, a cytosolic protein, designated CRAC (Lilly, P., and P. N. Devreotes. 1994. J. Biol. Chem. 269:1412314129; Insall, R. H., A. Kuspa, P. J. Lilly, G. Schaulsky, L. R. Levin, W. F. Loomis, and P. N. Devreotes. 1994. J. Cell Biol. 126:153...