Takeichi M, Hatta K, Nose A, Nagafuchi A
Department of Biophysics, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University, Japan.
Cell Differ Dev. 1988 Nov;25 Suppl:91-4. doi: 10.1016/0922-3371(88)90104-9.
Cadherins are a group of functionally related glycoproteins responsible for the Ca2+-dependent cell-cell adhesion mechanism. They are divided into subclasses, such as E-, P- and N-cadherin, which are distinct in immunological specificities and tissue distribution. Cell aggregation experiments suggest that these molecules have subclass specificities in cell-cell binding and are involved in selective cell adhesions. Analysis of amino acid sequences deduced from the nucleotide sequences of cDNAs encoding cadherins demonstrated that they are integral membrane proteins and share common sequences throughout their entire length; average similarity in the sequences among them is in a range of 50-60%. This result provided evidence that cadherins constitute a gene family which encodes adhesion molecules with different specificities. We also showed that, when cells with little cadherin activity were transfected with cadherin cDNAs, they acquired the cadherin-mediated adhesion properties.
钙黏着蛋白是一组功能相关的糖蛋白，负责Ca2+依赖的细胞间黏附机制。它们被分为不同的亚类，如E-钙黏着蛋白、P-钙黏着蛋白和N-钙黏着蛋白，这些亚类在免疫特异性和组织分布上有所不同。细胞聚集实验表明，这些分子在细胞间结合方面具有亚类特异性，并参与选择性细胞黏附。对编码钙黏着蛋白的cDNA核苷酸序列推导的氨基酸序列分析表明，它们是整合膜蛋白，并且在整个长度上具有共同序列；它们之间序列的平均相似度在50%-60%的范围内。这一结果证明钙黏着蛋白构成了一个基因家族，该家族编码具有不同特异性的黏附分子。我们还表明，当用钙黏着蛋白cDNA转染钙黏着蛋白活性低的细胞时，这些细胞获得了钙黏着蛋白介导的黏附特性。
