Septins are a group of filament forming proteins that act as scaffolds and diffusion barriers that regulate various cellular functions, such as cytokinesis. Recently, evidence was obtained in our laboratory that septins may also regulate mammalian cell polarity through their interaction with Par3, an important metazoan polarity regulator.
In this thesis I sought to examine whether septins regulated the polarization of migrating cells through their interaction with Par3 as well as how this interaction occurred. I demonstrated that the C terminus of Sept7 was capable of binding to Par3 in vitro. Sept7 was also able to colocalize with Par3, but an interaction between the two proteins could not be detected by immunoprecipitation. Migration assays used to examine the significance of Sept7 in polarization showed a small decrease in polarization after Sept7 depletion. This suggests that septins may play a non-essential role in regulating the polarization of migrating cells.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/30142 |
| Date | 30 November 2011 |
| Creators | Cheng, Catherine Valerie |
| Contributors | Trimble, William S. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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