Filipe Vilas-Boas

BACKGROUND:
To become metastatic, a tumor cell must acquire new adhesion properties that allow migration into the surrounding connective tissue, transmigration across endothelial cells to reach the blood stream and, at the site of metastasis, adhesion to endothelial cells and transmigration to colonize a new tissue. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a redox signaling molecule produced in tumor cell microenvironment with high relevance for tumor development. However, the molecular mechanisms regulated by H2O2 in tumor cells are still poorly known. The identification of H2O2-target proteins in tumor cells and the understanding of their role in tumor cell adhesion are essential for the development of novel redox-based therapies for cancer.

RESULTS:
In this paper, we identified Ribosomal Protein SA (RPSA) as a target of H2O2 and showed that RPSA in the oxidized state accumulates in clusters that contain specific adhesion molecules. Furthermore, we showed that RPSA oxidation improves cell adhesion efficiency to laminin in vitro and promotes cell extravasation in vivo.

CONCLUSIONS:
Our results unravel a new mechanism for H2O2-dependent modulation of cell adhesion properties and identify RPSA as the H2O2 sensor in this process. This work indicates that high levels of RPSA expression might confer a selective advantage to tumor cells in an oxidative environment.

The molecular processes that are crucial for cell function, such as proliferation, migration and survival, are regulated by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Although environmental cues, such as growth factors, regulate redox signaling, it was still unknown whether the ECM, a component of the cell microenvironment, had a function in this process.

Here, we showed that the extracellular matrix (ECM) differently regulated H2O2 consumption by endothelial cells and that this effect was not general for all types of cells. The analysis of biophysical properties of the endothelial cell membrane suggested that this modification in H2O2 consumption rates was not due to altered membrane permeability. Instead, we found that the ECM regulated GPx activity, a known H2O2 scavenger. Finally, we showed that the extent of PTEN oxidation was dependent on the ECM, indicating that the ECM was able to modulate H2O2-dependent protein oxidation.

Thus, our results unraveled a new mechanism by which the ECM regulates endothelial cell function by altering redox balance. These results pinpoint the ECM as an important component of redox-signaling.

BACKGROUND:

Building the complex vertebrate nervous system involves the regulated production of neurons and glia while maintaining a progenitor cell population. Neurogenesis starts asynchronously in different regions of the embryo and occurs over a long period of time, allowing progenitor cells to be exposed to multiple extrinsic signals that regulate the production of different cell types. Notch-mediated cell-cell signalling is one of the mechanisms that maintain the progenitor pool, however, little is known about how the timing of Notch activation is related to the cell cycle and the distinct modes of cell division that generate neurons. An essential tool with which to investigate the role of Notch signalling on cell by cell basis is the development a faithful reporter of Notch activity.
RESULTS:

Here we present a novel reporter for Notch activity based on the promoter of the well characterised Notch target chick Hes5-1, coupled with multiple elements that confer instability, including a destabilized nuclear Venus fluorescent protein and the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of Hes5-1. We demonstrate that this reporter faithfully recapitulates the endogenous expression of Hes5-1 and that it robustly responds to Notch activation in the chick neural tube. Analysis of the patterns of Notch activity revealed by this reporter indicates that although Notch is most frequently activated prior to mitosis it can be activated at any time within the cell cycle. Notch active progenitors undergoing mitosis generate two daughters that both continue to experience Notch signalling. However, cells lacking Notch activity before and during mitosis generate daughters with dissimilar Notch activity profiles.
CONCLUSIONS:

A novel Notch reporter with multiple destabilisation elements provides a faithful read-out of endogenous Notch activity on a cell-by-cell basis, as neural progenitors progress through the cell cycle in the chick neural tube. Notch activity patterns in this cell population provide evidence for distinct Notch signalling dynamics underlying different cell division modes and for the involvement of random initiation of Notch signalling within the neuroepithelium. These findings highlight the importance of single-cell analysis in the study of the complexity of Notch activity and provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying cell fate decisions in neural progenitors.