Keratin intermediate filament involvement in simple epithelial cell mechanical activity

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The ability of cells to sense and adapt to mechanical stimuli is critical for basic cellular activities like migration, growth, and differentiation, during development. Forces are transferred to the surface membrane from the extracellular matrix (ECM) or intracellularly generated within the actin cytoskeleton. In both cases, the mechanical forces converge on integrins, which cluster within focal adhesion (FA) sites and link ECM to actin cytoskeleton. However, little is known about the contribution of the cell-type dependent intermediate filaments (IFs), such as keratin IFs, and related cell-cell adhesion events, to epithelial cell mechanical activity. Moreover, whether keratin IFs exert a regulatory role in organ development is unclear.