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. 2009 Aug 24;186(4):571–587. doi: 10.1083/jcb.200812176

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© 2009 Oser et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.jcb.org/misc/terms.shtml). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

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Figure 9. — Cortactin regulates the activities of cofilin and N-WASp to control the stages of invadopodium assembly and maturation (model). During precursor formation (stage 1), cortactin, N-WASp, cofilin, and Arp2/3 form a complex involving cortactin's Arp2/3 and N-WASp binding domains. Cortactin is then tyrosine phosphorylated, which activates cofilin's severing activity to generate free barbed ends and the Arp2/3 complex can use these cofilin-generated barbed ends for efficient actin polymerization (stage 2). Cortactin is then dephosphorylated, which stabilizes the invadopodium precursor for maturation (stage 3). Box at stage 3 and 4 indicates stabilization. MT1-MMP can be recruited at stages 2–4. Stages 1–3 are required for a precursor to become a mature invadopodium that efficienctly degrades ECM (stage 4).