Both skeletal muscle and heart are comprised of muscle cells, and so one might expect that the top GO terms for both tissue models would be general muscle-related GO terms such as actin-mediated cell contraction.
We have found that interference with actin pathways can affect Dupuytren's fibroblast contractility (Satish et al., manuscript in preparation) and enhanced levels of Shroom 2 may, be one of the factors that alter actin-mediated cell contraction in DC, potentially identifying it as an attractive target through which to inhibit disease progression or recurrence.
Additionally, ROCK proteins are essential for multiple aspects of both the intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic processes, including regulation of cytoskeletal-mediated cell contraction and membrane blebbing, nuclear membrane disintegration, modulation of Bcl-2 family member and caspase expression/activation and phagocytosis of fragmented apoptotic bodies [ 34].
Although more studies are required to better understand the underlying mechanism, inhibition of RhoA/Rho kinase is likely to play a role in the FXR-mediated negative regulation of stellate cell contraction.
However, aberrant cell contraction can result in pathological contracture.
Interfering with actomyosin contraction demonstrated that interfering with cell contraction can also diminish cell cohesion.
Thy-1, a cell surface glycoprotein which inhibits a fibrogenic phenotype in fibroblasts and is associated with decreased fibrosis in the bleomycin model [ 223, 224], may have a role in cell contraction-mediated TGF-β activation.
On the other hand, the less stiff substrates cross-linked with DHT allowed increased cell-mediated scaffold contraction, contracting by 70% following 6 weeks (P < 0.01) of culture.
Thirdly, PAR-1 antagonist and agonist peptides had no discernable effects either on C2C12 cell-mediated contraction of fibrin/Col I or C2C12-α2β1 cell-mediated coftraction of pure Col I gels.
