UMMS Affiliation

Department of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology

Publication Date

2019-03-19

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Cell Biology | Cells | Developmental Biology | Embryonic Structures

Abstract

Metazoan cell death mechanisms are diverse and include numerous non-apoptotic programs. One program called entosis involves the invasion of live cells into their neighbors and is known to occur in cancers. Here, we identify a developmental function for entosis: to clear the male-specific linker cell in C. elegans. The linker cell leads migration to shape the gonad and is removed to facilitate fusion of the gonad to the cloaca. We find that the linker cell is cleared in a manner involving cell-cell adhesions and cell-autonomous control of uptake through linker cell actin. Linker cell entosis generates a lobe structure that is deposited at the site of gonad-to-cloaca fusion and is removed during mating. Inhibition of lobe scission inhibits linker cell death, demonstrating that the linker cell invades its host while alive. Our findings demonstrate a developmental function for entosis: to eliminate a migrating cell and facilitate gonad-to-cloaca fusion, which is required for fertility.

Keywords

cell adhesion, cell cannibalism, engulfment, entosis, entotic cell death, gonad, linker cell death, lobe, scission, uropod

Rights and Permissions

Copyright 2019 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

DOI of Published Version

10.1016/j.celrep.2019.02.073

Source

Cell Rep. 2019 Mar 19;26(12):3212-3220.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.02.073. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Cell reports

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

30893595

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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