Becker's World of the Cell 9th Edition by Lewis Kleinsmith, Jeff Hardin, Gregory Paul Bertoni

Exercise 2

Anchoring Cells to the ECM. Animal cells attach to several different kinds of proteins within the ECM.
(a)Briefly explain how the various domains of the fibronectin molecule (see Figure 17-18)or the laminin molecule (see Figure 17-21)are important for their function.
(b)Historically, an important strategy for disrupting the adhesion of integrins to their ligands is by using a synthetic peptide that mimics the binding site on the ECM molecule to which the integrin attaches. In the case of fibronectin, the amino acid sequence is arginine-glycine-aspartate (when written using the single letter designation for each amino acid, this sequence becomes RGD). Explain why addition of such synthetic peptides would disrupt binding of cells to their normal substratum.