A molecule called n-cofilin plays a key role in regulating cell movement, according to researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Rome, Italy. The molecule, they say, offers a potential target to treat diseases that result from uncontrolled cell migration, including cancer.

The n-cofilin molecule had only previously been studied by in vitro assays for its ability to break down actin fibers, which are responsible for giving cells the ability to move. Walter Witke, PhD, and colleagues wanted to go further to see just how important the n-cofilin molecule was for cell migration in mammals. For this, the researchers studied what happens in a strain of mouse in which n-cofilin stops functioning just as the neural crest begins to form in an embryo.

“The knockout was done as a conditional knockout, which, in principle, means that we can delete the protein at any given time in development or any given tissue,” says Witke. This is the first report that describes the complete knockout of n-cofilni in all cell types and tissues of the embryo.”

The researchers observed the effects in mutant mice by placing a sample of the neural crest cells in culture on a substrate. The tiny pieces of neural crest tissue rest on the plastic surface and the cells migrate out away from the tissue. The structure is stained with an antibody that highlights the neural crest cells. “We also looked at the cytoskeleton of the neural crest cells in the wild type, a control, and the mutant and we saw that the mutants that lack n-cofilin are not able to polarize the cell,” says Witke.

The researchers found that the presence of n-cofilin is important for allowing the neural crest cells to migrate out of the tissue and form many different tissues throughout the body. Neural crest cells normally migrate to different parts of the body and when they reach their destination they differentiate into different cell types including muscle, heart, cranium, and skin. “It is essential for these cells to migrate out of the structure and form the body and when you take out n-cofililn they can no longer do this,” says Witke.

By Elizabeth Tolchin