title: Vinculin and metavinculin: oligomerization and interactions with F-actin.
abstract: Vinculin, and its splice variant metavinculin, are scaffolding proteins that localize to cellular adhesions. Vinculin is a key player in mediating cell adhesion, motility, and cellular response to force. In the past decade, a number of new studies have evaluated the importance of vinculin oligomers, especially in their role of bundling F-actin. Emerging evidence also suggests that vinculin oligomerization is important for vinculin's scaffolding function. Here we describe the latest findings on vinculin's interaction with F-actin and we clarify the different known vinculin oligomers. Differences in these functions between vinculin and metavinculin provide key insights to the structure and function of these oligomers, and should guide further studies.
authors: Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. pmthomps@email.unc.edu
authors: Peter M
authors: PM
authors: Thompson
authors: Caitlin E
authors: CE
authors: Tolbert
authors: Sharon L
authors: SL
authors: Campbell
mesh_terms: D008841:Actin Cytoskeleton / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D000199:Actins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D011485:Protein Binding; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D016596:Vinculin / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000199:Actins; C103334:metavinculin; D016596:Vinculin