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Fibronectin-bound α5β1 integrins sense load and signal to reinforce adhesion in less than a second

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 1262–1270 (2017)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 19 December 2017

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Abstract

Integrin-mediated mechanosensing of the extracellular environment allows cells to control adhesion and signalling. Whether cells sense and respond to force immediately upon ligand-binding is unknown. Here, we report that during adhesion initiation, fibroblasts respond to mechanical load by strengthening integrin-mediated adhesion to fibronectin (FN) in a biphasic manner. In the first phase, which depends on talin and kindlin as well as on the actin nucleators Arp2/3 and mDia, FN-engaged α5β1 integrins activate focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and c-Src in less than 0.5 s to steeply strengthen α5β1- and αV-class integrin-mediated adhesion. When the mechanical load exceeds a certain threshold, fibroblasts decrease adhesion and initiate the second phase, which is characterized by less steep adhesion strengthening. This unique, biphasic cellular adhesion response is mediated by α5β1 integrins, which form catch bonds with FN and signal to FN-binding integrins to reinforce cell adhesion much before visible adhesion clusters are formed.

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Figure 1: Fibroblast adhesion to fibronectin (FN) increases biphasically with the retraction speed applied to separate cell and substrate.
Figure 2: Speed-dependent rupture forces required to separate single αV-class and α5β1 integrins bound to fibronectin.
Figure 3: How fibroblasts strengthen adhesion in response to mechanical load depends on integrin activity and contact time with the substrate.
Figure 4: Fibroblasts require talin, F-actin polymerization to strengthen adhesion in response to mechanical load.
Figure 5: Integrin activation in response to mechanical load depends on FAK and c-Src signalling.
Figure 6: Instant strengthening of fibroblast adhesion to FN in response to mechanical load.

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  • 21 November 2017

    In the version of this Article originally published, Fig. 6 was not cited; a citation to it has now been added at the end of the first paragraph of 'Discussion'. This has been corrected in all versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Weiser and J. Thoma for fibronectin fragment cloning, expression and purification, the Single Cell Facility (SCF) of the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of the ETH Zürich for help with flow cytometry, N. Beerenwinkel for help with statistical questions and J. Helenius and J. Polleux for critical discussions. This work was supported by the European Research Council (Grant Agreement no. 322652), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB865-B3), and Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant 31003A_138063).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, 4058 Basel, Switzerland

    Nico Strohmeyer, Mitasha Bharadwaj & Daniel J. Müller

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Estructura de Reserca Interdisciplinar en Biotechnologia i Biomedicina, Universitat de València, 46100 Burjassot, Spain

    Mercedes Costell

  3. Department of Molecular Medicine, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, 82152 Martinsried, Germany

    Reinhard Fässler

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Contributions

N.S., M.B., R.F. and D.J.M. designed the experiments and wrote the paper. N.S. performed and analysed most experiments. M.B. performed initial experiments. R.F. and M.C. provided reagents and/or analytical tools. All authors discussed the experiments, read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Daniel J. Müller.

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Strohmeyer, N., Bharadwaj, M., Costell, M. et al. Fibronectin-bound α5β1 integrins sense load and signal to reinforce adhesion in less than a second. Nature Mater 16, 1262–1270 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat5023

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