Some lab meetings are more productive than others…
here the “archetypal” laminin is represented by the blue green and red pipecleaners, The area where they are twisted together is the laminin coiled-coil domain, the three separate bits are the short arms. It is through these short arms that laminin networks form.
However, there are rules.
For a network to form there must be an alpha, a beta and gamma chain short arm coming together, it must be red/blue/green at the nodes. They end up making these pretty hexagonal arrays as you see in the vid.
But, this is LaNts and laminins website… we need to talk add LaNts! The LaNt are free floating LN domains of the alpha type. So when there is LaNt around it can compete with the alpha chain at those ternary nodes.
In our lab meeting we started chatting about how much LaNt there would need to be to change the laminin matrix. Our pipecleaner model made it pretty clear that just adding a little means the network pore size starts to increase and likely the matrix would be softer or more compliant. Add too much, and likely the whole network would collapse.
Our current thinking is that these LaNt proteins are a way of fine tuning these biophysical features of a network depending on what a tissue needs at different times. Perhaps defining where cells leave blood vessels, perhaps contributing to the invasion of cancers, but maybe also facilitating cross-talk between epithelial and stromal cells during times of tissue remodelling.
Pretty cool.
LaNts and Laminins 