The ability of cells stick to one another using proteins called cadherins is crucial in all animals. When cadherin-based stickiness fails, birth defects can occur, and such loss of stickiness occurs in cancer cells. In the future, our ability to make "designer tissues" via tissue engineering will require us to manipulate cadherin-based cell stickiness. This project will study how a protein implicated in muscular dystrophy, tropomodulin, acts to make cadherin-based stickiness stronger. The nematode worm, C. elegans, will be used as a test bed for understanding how tropomodulin regulates cell stickiness through cadherins, using genetics, powerful microscopes to watch the movements of proteins in living embryos, and biochemistry. The result of these studies should be a better understanding of how cadherin-based stickiness is regulated, and how a protein found from worms to humans regulates this stickiness. Through this project graduate and undergraduate students will be trained in the process of science, new educational materials will be produced that will be freely available to anyone in the world through a project called WormClassroom, and elementary-age students will be exposed to exciting developments in biology through a long-term community outreach program.
