Estrogen Receptor alpha depletion affects the biomechanical properties and cytoskeleton rearrangements in breast cancer cells.

In this study, we found that tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer cells (MCF-7/TamR) altered cell morphology and lacked of ERα expression during the process of the Tamoxifen resistance induction. To determine whether this change was influenced by ERα expression, we transiently constructed another ERα depleted model with ERα siRNA (MCF-7/ERα siRNA) and used atomic force microscope (AFM) to detect morphological and biophysical changes. The results indicated that the roughness and Young's modulus of ERα expression depleted cells were significantly increased, accompanied by rearrangement of the cytoskeletal proteins (F-actin, FLNA, α-tubulin) and the cytoskeletal regulatory protein Rho (Rac1, CDC42) decreased. Our results have demonstrated that ERα depletion affects the biomechanical properties of breast cancer cells, which are related to cytoskeletal protein rearrangement and Rho protein decreased. PMID: 32081423 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32081423?dopt=Abstract

Source: Biochemical and Biophysical Research communications - February 17, 2020 Category: Biochemistry Authors: Zhao C, Hou X, Peng Z, Sun X, Li E, Yang H, Lu Y, Zhu L Tags: Biochem Biophys Res Commun Source Type: research