[Changes of membrane polarity of MCF-7 cells in sub-multilayer culture]

Sub-multilayer of MCF-7 cell, an established human breast carcinoma cell line, was achieved by culturing the cells on millipore filters for a long time. The superficial layer cells maintained their membrane polarity features as MCF-7 cells in monolayers did. MAM-6, a human milk fat globule membrane antigen, was polarized distributed in apical domain of 97.5% superficial layer cells revealed by immunoperoxidase cytochemistry. Whereas, among the low layer cells, which had no free surface (apical domain) toward the culture medium and did not show morphological polarity features, only 12.9% expressed surface MAM-6 with weak immunoperoxidase staining and random distribution. But the immunostaining for detecting cytoplasmic MAM-6 in low layer cells was stronger than that in superficial layer cells, indicating that the vectorial delivery and insert of MAM-6 carrying glycoprotein to the plasma membrane seemed to be stopped or declined and became undirectional in the later situation. The study demonstrates that an asymmetric spatial environment, which is composed of a liquid phase space and a solid phase space, is crucial for the establishment of epithelial membrane polarity of MCF-7 cells.