Figure 4. Reciprocal relationship between α-actinin and vinculin expression and recruitment to FAs.
(A) Effect of α-actinin isoform suppression on vinculin expression by Western Blot. Vinculin expression is significantly lower (*p<0.05) in both α-actinin-1 and α-actinin-4-depleted cells than in control cells. (B) Effect of α-actinin depletion on vinculin localization. Both α-actinin-1 and α-actinin-4 depleted cells contain more vinculin-positive FAs (arrows) than controls. Scale bar = 20 µm. (C) Quantitative analysis of size and number of vinculin-positive adhesions. The right-shift of the siACTN1 and siACTN4 data relative to control demonstrates that both α-actinin-1 and α-actinin-4 depleted cells possess larger and more numerous adhesions than controls. (D) Circularity of vinculin-positive FAs of siCTL, siACTN1 and siACTN4 cells (*p<0.001). In all cases, data are mean±SEM.