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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jun 10.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2012 Sep 1;24(5):677–684. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2012.08.002

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Cadherins in epithelial cells. (a) Interaction between two epithelial cells. Explorative protrusions driven by Rac1 activity promote the formation of an initial contact. At the site of contact RhoA controls the switch from branched actin to parallel bundles of actomyosin. The contact progressively expands into a stable Adherens Junction. (b–d) Different types of epithelial collective cell migration: cell sheet (b), isolated groups (c) and strands (d). (e) In such tissues, traction forces from integrin-mediated contacts with the extracellular matrix are transmitted as local stresses across the cell sheet via cadherin-based junctions. (f) Shear and normal stress are generated at the cell-cell contact. Cadherins are in red, integrins are in green. Actin cytoskeleton is shown as orange fibers.