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The tumour-suppressor Scribble dictates cell polarity during directed epithelial migration: regulation of Rho GTPase recruitment to the leading edge

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 16 August 2007

Abstract

Altered expression of human Scribble is associated with invasive epithelial cancers, however, its role in tumour development remains unclear. Mutations in Drosophila Scribble result in loss of polarity, overproliferation and 3D-tumourous overgrowth of epithelial cells. Using complementation studies in Drosophila we recently demonstrated that expression of human Scribble can also regulate polarity and restrict tissue overgrowth. Here, we have undertaken a detailed study of human Scribble function in the polarized mammary cell line, MCF10A. We show that although Scribble does not seem to be required for apical-basal polarity or proliferation control in MCF10A cells, Scribble is essential for the control of polarity associated with directed epithelial cell migration. Scribble-depleted MCF10A cells show defective in vitro wound closure and chemotactic movement. The cells at the wound edge fail to polarize, show reduced lamellipodia formation and impaired recruitment of Cdc42 and Rac1 to the leading edge. Furthermore, we show that this function is relevant in vivo as Scribble mutant mice show defective epidermal wound healing. This data identifies an essential role for mammalian Scribble in the regulation of the polarity specifically involved in directed epithelial migration.

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Abbreviations

MTOC:

microtubule organizing centre

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank members of the Bissell lab, and J Debnath and S Muthuswamy for advice with the culture of MCF10A cells. We thank S Ellis and N Waterhouse for assistance with confocal and live-cell microscopy, R Redvers for advice on culture of primary keratinocytes and J Hayes for maintenance of the scribblerumz mouse colony. We thank H Richardson and A Brumby for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by project grants from the National Institutes of Health (USA) (PO1 HL53749⁁03) and Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (282400) (SMJ), the Australian Research Council (SMR), the Association for International Cancer Research UK and The Cancer Council Victoria (POH, SMR). LED was supported by a Cancer Council Victoria Postgraduate Cancer Research Scholarship, JSK was supported by The LAVFW Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and POH was supported by a Career Development Award from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

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Correspondence to P O Humbert.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Oncogene website (http://www.nature.com/onc).

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Dow, L., Kauffman, J., Caddy, J. et al. The tumour-suppressor Scribble dictates cell polarity during directed epithelial migration: regulation of Rho GTPase recruitment to the leading edge. Oncogene 26, 2272–2282 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.onc.1210016

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