Comparison of the relative importance of tyrosine-specific vinculin phosphorylation and the loss of surface-associated fibronectin in the morphology of cells transformed by Rous sarcoma virus.

We have investigated the relative importance of tyrosine-specific phosphorylation of vinculin and the loss of surface-associated fibronectin in the maintenance of the rounded morphology characteristic of chick embryo fibroblasts (CEF) transformed by Rous sarcoma virus (RSV). To address this question we have examined the interaction of CEF and RSV-CEF in vitro with exogenously added fibronectin in both 3-day culture experiments and short-term, 3-h spreading experiments. We report that the addition of human plasma fibronectin to cultures of RSV-CEF results in the restoration of a near-normal morphology, as has been described previously, with the added fibronectin incorporated into an extracellular matrix. However, the phosphotyrosine content of vinculin in these cells was unchanged from that of control, untreated RSV-CEF despite the change in morphology. In short-term spreading experiments RSV-CEF were unable to adopt a fully spread morphology on fibronectin substrates, with defects in the formation of adhesion plaques and microfilament bundles compared with untransformed CEF. pp60v-src was present in the newly formed adhesion plaques of RSV-CEF spreading on fibronectin substrates. The relevance of these results to the maintenance of the transformed phenotype is discussed.