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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

Development and Application of Rapamycin-regulated Tyrosine Phosphatases
Published on: September 6, 2024
TIMP-2 promotes cell spreading and adhesion via upregulation of Rap1 signaling
Hyeujin Chang1, Jungeun Lee, Haryoung Poo
1Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, Korea University Graduate School of Medicine, Ansan, Gyeonggi do 425-707, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
We previously demonstrated that TIMP-2 treatment of human microvascular endothelial cells (hMVECs) activates Rap1 via the pathway of paxillin-Crk-C3G. Here, we show that TIMP-2 overexpression in hMVECs by adenoviral infection enhances Rap1 expression, leading to further increase in Rap1-GTP. TIMP-2 expression, previously reported to inhibit cell migration, also leads to cell spreading accompanied with increased cell adhesion. HMVECs stably expressing Rap1 display a similar phenotype as hMVECs-TIMP-2, whereas the expression of inactive Rap1 mutant, Rap1(38N), leads to elongated appearance with greatly reduced cell adhesion. Furthermore, the phenotype of hMVECs-Rap1(38N) was not reversed by TIMP-2 overexpression. TIMP-2 greatly promotes the association of Rap1 with actin. Therefore, these findings suggest that TIMP-2 mediated alteration in cell morphology requires Rap1, TIMP-2 may recruit Rap1 to sites of actin cytoskeleton remodeling necessary for cell spreading, and enhanced cell adhesion by TIMP-2 expression may hinder cell migration.
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