Fig. 5
Fibronectin Is Essential for Cooperative Invasion; Invasive Primary Melanoma Cells Are Also Heterogeneous (A) Western blot showing stable knockdown of fibronectin in WM266-4 GFP shFN cells. #1 and #2 are clones expressing independent shRNA targeting fibronectin. Control (con) cells express an irrelevant shRNA. (B) Fibronectin associated with heterogeneous xenografts comprising either control WM266-4 cells (upper) or WM266-4 shFN#1 cells (lower). (C) Quantitation of invasion of 501mel and WM266-4 cells from heterogeneous xenografts comprising either control WM266-4 cells, WM266-4 shFN#1, or WM266-4 shFN#2 cells. Mean ± SEM; Mann-Whitney test; p < 0.05, p < 0.001, p < 0.001; n e 18 from three independent experiments. (D) MITF immunofluorescence in frozen sections of heterogeneous xenografts. Arrows indicate high and low MITF fluorescence intensity in invading cells. (E) Model depicting the reciprocal interactions underlying cooperative invasion. |