Faculty Bibliography

We explore the existence of cell-to-cell communication in monolayers of MDCK cells plated at high densities so that they form a continuous monolayer in a few minutes. Lucifer Yellow CH is injected in the cytoplasm of a given cell by using a glass microelectrode with a fine tip (ca. 100 M omega) and passing square pulses of current of 1.0 nA that last 10 msec, every 20 msec, during 1 to 3 min. We then examine the monolayer with fluorescence microscopy. In 27 out of 111 cells injected during the first 4 to 15 hr after plating, the dye was transferred to neighboring cells. Electron micrographs of freeze-fracture replicas prepared at this time, show that 20 to 25% of the lateral surfaces present the aggregates of intramembrane particles typical of gap junctions. These early hours correspond to the formation of occluding junctions and polarization into an apical and a basolateral domain of the plasma membrane (Cereijido, Meza & Martinez-Palomo, 1981). Cell-to-cell coupling then decreases sharply and, in the period between the 1st and 3rd day (mature monolayers), only 4 out of 49 injected cells were able to transfer the dye to their neighbors in the monolayers. No image of gap junctions was found in freeze-fracture replicas of mature monolayers. The degree of coupling between cells, as well as the number of cells coupled to the injected one, were highly variable. The lack of coupling between cells in mature monolayers observed in this article with Lucifer Yellow CH and electron microscopy is in keeping with the absence of electrical coupling observed in a previous work (Stefani & Cereijido, 1983). The transient existence of communicating junctions observed in monolayers of MDCK cells is similar to that described in the literature for embryo tissues during development

In confluent monolayers of the dog kidney epithelial cell line Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) assembly of RNA enveloped viruses reflects the functional polarization of the cells. Thus, influenza, Sendai, and Simian virus 5 bud from the apical (free) surface, while vesicular stomatitis virions (VSV) are assembled at basolateral plasma membrane domains (Rodriguez-Boulan, E., and D.D. Sabatini, 1978, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 75:5071-5075). MDCK cells derived from confluent monolayers by dissociation with trypsin-EDTA and maintained as single cells in spinner medium for 12-20 h before infection, lose their characteristic structural polarity. Furthermore, when these cells were infected with influenza or VSV, virions assembled in a nonpolarized fashion over most of the cell surface. However, when dissociated MDCK cells infected in suspension were sparsely plated on collagen gels to prevent intercellular contact and the formation of junctions, the characteristic polarity of viral budding observed in confluent monolayers was again manifested; i.e., VSV budded preferentially from adherent surfaces and influenza almost exclusively from free surface regions. Similar polarization was observed in cells which became aggregated during incubation in spinner medium: influenza budded from the free surface, while VSV was produced at regions of cell-cell contact. It therefore appears that in isolated epithelial cells attachment to a substrate or to another cell is sufficient to trigger the expression of plasma membrane polarity which is manifested in the asymmetric budding of viruses