Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) Pathway Regulates Branching by Remodeling Epithelial Cell Adhesion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although the growth factor (GF) signaling guiding renal branching is well characterized, the intracellular cascades mediating GF functions are poorly understood. We studied mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway specifically in the branching epithelia of developing kidney by genetically abrogating the pathway activity in mice lacking simultaneously dual-specificity protein kinases Mek1 and Mek2. Our data show that MAPK pathway is heterogeneously activated in the subset of G1- and S-phase epithelial cells, and its tissue-specific deletion results in severe renal hypodysplasia. Consequently to the deletion of Mek1/2, the activation of ERK1/2 in the epithelium is lost and normal branching pattern in mutant kidneys is substituted with elongation-only phenotype, in which the epithelium is largely unable to form novel branches and complex three-dimensional patterns, but able to grow without primary defects in mitosis. Cellular characterization of double mutant epithelium showed increased E-cadherin at the cell surfaces with its particular accumulation at baso-lateral locations. This indicates changes in cellular adhesion, which were revealed by electron microscopic analysis demonstrating intercellular gaps and increased extracellular space in double mutant epithelium. When challenged to form monolayer cultures, the mutant epithelial cells were impaired in spreading and displayed strong focal adhesions in addition to spiky E-cadherin. Inhibition of MAPK activity reduced paxillin phosphorylation on serine 83 while remnants of phospho-paxillin, together with another focal adhesion (FA) protein vinculin, were augmented at cell surface contacts. We show that MAPK activity is required for branching morphogenesis, and propose that it promotes cell cycle progression and higher cellular motility through remodeling of cellular adhesions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".