Nitric oxide may regulate focal adhesion turnover and cell migration in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells by modulating early endosome trafficking

Cell migration is an essential process for wound healing, metastasis and inflammation. Focal adhesions (FA) are local regions of plasma membrane consisting of multiprotein complexes providing adhesive contact between the cell and the extracellular matrix (ECM). FA turnover regulates different signalling pathways implicated in various cellular responses (e.g. cell migration). Endocytosis, specifically the dynamin and clathrin pathways, is known to regulate cell migration by modulating FA dynamics. In this study, we investigated whether NO activity regulates cell migration, FA dynamics and early endosome trafficking in MDA-MB-231 cells. The assessment of cell migration showed a slowing down of cell migration and an increased duration of FA turnover in cells treated with inhibitors of NO synthase (NOS) such as L-NAME or 1400W. In addition, these treatments were found to exhibit no effect on transferrin and dextran uptake mediated by endocytosis and micropinocytosis, respectively. The number of early endosome antigen 1 (EEA1)-positive endosomes was reduced while their sizes were found to increase in cells treated with L-NAME or 1400W. In contrast, these inhibitors did not affect the number nor the size of Rab5-positive endosomes. Furthermore, we demonstrated that EEA1, endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) and inducible NO synthase (iNOS) were colocalised. Using the biotin switch assay followed by western blot, we showed that early endosome proteins such as APPL1, EEA1, Rab5 were found to be S-nitrosylated. These results were further supported by the sequence analysis performed with the GPS-SNO algorithm which predicted the S-nitrosylation of these endosomal proteins. Taken together, our findings suggest that NO might be involved in cell migration and FA turnover through early endosome trafficking in MDA-MB-231 cells.

Running title: Nitric oxide in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells