Focal adhesion kinase regulates tractional collagen remodeling, matrix metalloproteinase expression, and collagen structure, which in turn affects matrix‐induced signaling
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is critical for collagen expression but its regulation of collagen remodeling is not defined. We examined the role of FAK in the degradation and reorganization of fibrillar collagen. Compared with wild‐type (WT) mouse embryonic fibroblasts, FAK null (FAK −/− ) fibroblasts generated twofold ( p < .0001) higher levels of ¾ collagen I fragment and expressed up to fivefold more membrane‐type matrix metalloproteinase (MMP). When plated on stiff collagen substrates, compared with WT, FAK −/− cells were smaller (threefold reduced cell surface area; p < .0001) and produced fivefold fewer cell extensions ( p < .0001) that were 40% shorter ( p < .001). When cultured on soft collagen gels (stiffness of ~100 Pa) for 6–48 hr, cell spreading and cell extension formation were reduced by greater than twofold ( p < .05 and p < .0001, respectively) while collagen compaction and alignment were reduced by approximately 30% ( p < .0001) in FAK −/− cells. Similar results were found after treatment with PF573228, a FAK inhibitor. Reconstitution of FAK −/− cells with FAK mutants showed that compared with WT, cell extension formation was reduced twofold ( p < .0001) in the absence of the kinase domain and sixfold ( p < .0001) with a Y397F mutant. Enhanced collagen degradation was exhibited by the mutants (~threefold increase; p < .0001 of ¾ collagen fragments without kinase domain or Y397F mutant; p < .01). Compared with FAK +/+ cells, matrices produced by FAK −/− cells generated higher levels of β 1 integrin activation ( p < 0.05), extracellular‐signal‐regulated kinase (ERK) phosphorylation, and production of ¾ collagen I fragment by human gingival fibroblasts. Collectively these data indicate that (a) the kinase activity of FAK enhances collagen remodeling by tractional forces but inhibits collagen degradation by MMPs; (b) FAK influences the biological activity of fibroblast‐secreted extracellular matrices, which in turn impacts β1 integrin and ERK signaling, and collagen degradation.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".