Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Breaking barriers: Investigating the junctional and mechanobiological changes underlying the ability of Drosophila immune cells to invade an epithelium

Objective

"The ability of cells to invade underlies many pathological conditions such as metastasis and inflammation. Invasion requires coordination of changes in the biology of the invading cell coupled with changes in the adhesive behavior and integrity of the penetrated barrier. This proposed project aims to understand the modulation of epithelial integrity during immune cell transmigration. Recent work has shown that Drosophila hemocytes invade through an epithelial barrier during embryonic development and require the small GTPase RhoL to breach Cadherin barriers. We will identify morphological and biophysical changes in epithelial integrity during this immune cell transmigration. To assess potential changes in junctional Cadherin expression during hemocyte invasion, immunofluorescence analysis and live imaging of junctional DE-Cadherin and the Actomyosin network will be performed. This will be followed by “Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching” (FRAP) studies of DE-Cadherin-GFP fusion proteins to understand whether hemocyte invasion alters DE-Cadherin stability at the junctions. These experiments will provide clear insight into whether changes in DE-Cadherin integrity precede hemocyte invasion. Cell-cell junctions are known sites of mechanotransduction and hence this project will next aim to evaluate possible changes in the mechanobiology of Adherens junctions during transmigration. A FRET based tension sensor will be cloned into Drosophila and utilized to assess if there is force generation at the Adherens junctions during transmigration. This will be followed by laser nanoablation of cell junctions to assess changes in cortical tension during hemocyte invasion. These studies will concertedly address the role of junctional changes and mechanotransduction during invasion and thus provide new insight into epithelial biology during immune cell transmigration. Our studies should have relevance for future studies of pathologies like inflammation and cancer metastasis."

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IIF
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IIF - International Incoming Fellowships (IIF)

Coordinator

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AUSTRIA
EU contribution
€ 179 137,20
Address
Am Campus 1
3400 KLOSTERNEUBURG
Austria

See on map

Region
Ostösterreich Niederösterreich Wiener Umland/Nordteil
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0