Author: Henok Karvonen

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a pre-invasive stage of breast cancer. During invasion, the encapsulating DCIS basement membrane (BM) is compromised, and tumor cells invade the surrounding stroma. The mechanisms that regulate functional epithelial BMs in vivo are poorly understood. Myosin-X (MYO10) is a filopodia-inducing protein associated with metastasis…

Cells and tissues generate and are exposed to various mechanical forces that act across a range of scales, from tissues to cells to organelles. Forces provide crucial signals to inform cell behaviour during development and adult tissue homeostasis, and alterations in forces and in their downstream mechanotransduction pathways can influence…

Altshuler, Anna; Wickström, Sara A.; Shalom-Feuerstein, Ruby The existence of stem cells (SCs) at the tip of the cellular differentiation hierarchy has fascinated the scientific community ever since their discovery in the early 1950s to 1960s. Despite the remarkable success of the SC theory and the development of SC-based…

Kokate, Shrikant B.; Ciuba, Katarzyna; Tran, Vivien D.; Kumari, Reena; Tojkander, Sari; Engel, Ulrike; Kogan, Konstantin; Kumar, Sanjay; Lappalainen, Pekka Abstract Contractile actomyosin bundles are key force-producing and mechanosensing elements in muscle and non-muscle tissues. Whereas the organization of muscle myofibrils and mechanism regulating their contractility are relatively well-established,…

The plasma membrane, as a highly complex cell organelle, serves as a crucial platform for a multitude of cellular processes. Its collective biophysical properties are largely determined by the structural diversity of the different lipid species it accommodates. Therefore, a detailed investigation of biophysical properties of the plasma membrane is…

Cells are continuously exposed to tissue-specific extrinsic forces that are counteracted by cell-intrinsic force generation through the actomyosin cytoskeleton and alterations in the material properties of various cellular components, including the nucleus. Forces impact nuclei both directly through inducing deformation, which is sensed by various mechanosensitive components of the nucleus,…

Vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C) induces lymphangiogenesis via VEGF receptor 3 (VEGFR3), which is encoded by the most frequently mutated gene in human primary lymphedema. Angiopoietins (Angs) and their Tie receptors regulate lymphatic vessel development, and mutations of the ANGPT2 gene were recently found in human primary lymphedema. However,…

Actin polymerization generates forces for cellular processes throughout the eukaryotic kingdom, but our understanding of the ‘ancient’ actin turnover machineries is limited. We show that, despite > 1 billion years of evolution, pathogenic Leishmania major parasite and mammalian actins share the same overall fold and co-polymerize with each other. Interestingly,…

The actomyosin cytoskeleton serves as a key regulator of the integrity and remodeling of epithelial barriers by controlling assembly and functions of intercellular junctions and cell-matrix adhesions. Although biochemical mechanisms that regulate the activity of non-muscle myosin II (NM-II) in epithelial cells have been extensively investigated, little is known about…