English

Tumorigenic fragments of APC cause dominant defects in directional cell migration in multiple model systems.

This article is from Disease Models & Mechanisms , volume 5 . Abstract Nonsense mutations that result in the expression of truncated, N-terminal, fragments of the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) tumour suppressor protein are found in most sporadic and some hereditary colorectal cancers. These mutations can cause tumorigenesis by eliminating β-catenin-binding sites from APC, which leads to upregulation of β-catenin and thereby results in the induction of oncogenes such as MYC. Here we show that, in three distinct experimental model systems, expression of an N-terminal fragment of APC (N-APC) results in loss of directionality, but not speed, of cell motility independently of changes in β-catenin regulation. We developed a system to culture and fluorescently label live pieces of gut tissue to record high-resolution three-dimensional time-lapse movies of cells in situ. This revealed an unexpected complexity of normal gut cell migration, a key process in gut epithelial maintenance, with cells moving with spatial and temporal discontinuity. Quantitative comparison of gut tissue from wild-type mice and APC heterozygotes (APCMin/+; multiple intestinal neoplasia model) demonstrated that ce

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