Vinculin

Mammalian protein found in Homo sapiens

In mammalian cells, vinculin is a membrane cytoskeletal protein in focal adhesion plaques that is involved in linkage of integrin adhesion molecules to the actin cytoskeleton. Vinculin is a cytoskeletal protein associated with cell cell and cell matrix junctions, where it is thought to function as one of several interacting proteins involved in anchoring F actin to the membrane. Discovered independently by Benny Geiger and Keith Burridge, its sequence is 20%–30% similar to α catenin, which serves a similar function. Binding alternately to talin or α actinin, vinculin's shape and, as a consequence, its binding properties are changed. The vinculin gene occurs as a single copy and what appears to be no close relative to take over functions in its absence. Its splice variant metavinculin (see below) also needs vinculin to heterodimerize and work in a dependent fashion.

Vinculin is a 117 kDa cytoskeletal protein with 1066 amino acids. The protein contains an acidic N terminal domain and a basic C terminal domain separated by a proline rich middle segment. Vinculin consists of a globular head domain that contains binding sites for talin and α actinin as well as a tyrosine phosphorylation site, while the tail region contains binding sites for F actin, paxillin, and lipids. The complex at the focal adhesions consists of several proteins such as vinculin, α actinin, paxillin, and talin, at the intracellular face of the plasma membrane. In more specific terms, the amino terminus of vinculin binds to talin, which, in turn, binds to β integrins, and the carboxy terminus binds to actin, phospholipids, and paxillin forming homodimers. The binding of vinculin to talin and actin is regulated by polyphosphoinositides and inhibited by acidic phospholipids. The complex then serves to anchor actin filaments to the membrane and thus, helps to reinforce force on talin within the focal adhesions. The loss of vinculin impacts a variety of cell functions; it disrupts the formation of the complex, and prevents cell adhesion and spreading. The absence of the protein demonstrates a decrease in spreading of cells, accompanied by reduced stress fiber formation, formation of fewer focal adhesions, and inhibition of lamellipodia extension. It was discovered that cells that are deficient in vinculin have growth cones that advance more slowly, as well as filopodia and lamellipodia that were less stable than the wild type. Based on research, it has been postulated that the lack of vinculin may decrease cell adhesion by inhibiting focal adhesion assembly and preventing actin polymerization. On the other hand, overexpression of vinculin may restore adhesion and spreading by promoting recruitment of cytoskeletal proteins to the focal adhesion complex at the site of integrin binding. The active state is triggered upon binding to its designated partner. These changes occur when vinculin interacts with focal adhesion points to which it is binding to. When vinculin resides in its inactive form, the protein is kept designated to the cytoplasm unlike the focal adhesion points bound from the active state. The molecule talin is thought to be the major initiator of vinculin activation due to its presence in focal complexes. The combinatorial model of vinculin states that either α actinin or talin can activate vinculin either alone or with the assistance of PIP2 or actin. This activation takes place by separation of the head tail connection within inactive vinculin.

Smooth muscles and skeletal muscles (and probably to a lower extent in cardiac muscle) in their well differentiated (contractile) state co express (along with vinculin) a splice variant carrying an extra exon in the 3' coding region, thus encoding a longer isoform meta vinculin (meta VCL) of ~150KD molecular weight — a protein whose existence has been known since the 1980s. Translation of the extra exon causes a 68 to 79 amino acid acid rich insert between helices I and II within the C terminal tail domain. Mutations within the insert region correlate with hereditary idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. The length of the insert in metavinculin is 68 AA in mammals and 79 in frog. Compared metavinculin sequences from pig, man, chicken, and frog, and found the insert to be bipartite: the first part variable and the second highly conserved. Both vinculin isoforms co localize in muscular adhesive structures, such as dense plaques in smooth muscles, intercalated discs in cardiomyocytes, and costameres in skeletal muscles. Metavinculin tail domain has a lower affinity for the head as compared with the vinculin tail. In case of metavinculin, unfurling of the C terminal hydrophobic hairpin loop of tail domain is impaired by the negative charges of the 68 amino acid insert, thus requiring phospholipid activated regular isoform of vinculin to fully activate the metavinculin molecule.