Figure 1 - Directional movement of VE-cadherin at cell junctions.

(a) Projected images of VE-cadherin–EGFP expressed in A431D cells. Detailed information on the boxed areas is provided below (see also Supplementary Information, Movie 1). (b) Schematic representation of a top view of the cell junction in the yellow-boxed region in a, and a three-dimensional cell-shape sectioned at the blue and yellow lines. The arrowheads indicate the apical-most region of the junction. (c) Time-lapse images of the green-boxed region in a, acquired at 2-min intervals. Cadherin clusters, two representatives of which are marked with magenta circles, move from the basal-most (blue line) to apical-most (green line) portions of cell junction, and subsequently they are absorbed into the microspike-like structures (magenta arrows). (d) Time-lapse images of the blue-boxed region in a at two focal planes (FP1, FP2). The images acquired at the same time are arranged vertically. The cluster marked with the magenta arrow follows the one indicated by the green arrow. (e) Kymography with sampling at the magenta line in a. The magenta lines emphasize cadherin flow. (f) Trajectories of cadherin clusters in the white box in a. The thick broken lines indicate the apical-most portion of the junction, and each of the coloured lines indicates the trajectory of a single cadherin cluster. The scale bar represents 30 m.