Dan Brereton, Ryan Vellinga, Craig Barnette and Dr. Marc Hansen, Physiology and Developmental Biology

In order to better understand how cancer metastasizes we must discover how cancer cells are able to break down their cell-cell junctions. This process is likely due to altered levels of proteins within the cell that are responsible for forming and maintaining cell junctions. Zyxin and Rac1 are two key proteins involved in cell-cell junctions. We wanted to understand the relationship between zyxin and Rac1 and also how these proteins affect cell adhesion formation and strength.

In order to properly understand the relationship between zyxin and Rac1 we first needed to make mutant forms of these proteins and causes the expression of these mutant proteins in cells. By expressing constitutively active and inactive forms of zyxin and Rac1 in various combinations we can start to piece together the hierarchy of controls involved in cell-cell adhesion.

The first thing we set out to do was to create different mutant proteins through a process called transformation.