Calcium-sensitive acceleration of wound closure in mechanically wounded endothelial cells

Endothelial motility is an important response of the vasculature to injury. In vivo models of vascular injury indicate that full reendothelialization occurs in only small mechanical wounds (Reidy and Schwartz, 1981). In this work we have shown that scrape-wounding cultured endothelial monolayers results in the development of new adhesive contacts positively correlated with accelerated wound closure. A majority of these new contacts display close contact morphology and colocalize near active lamellapodium with the GTP-binding protein Rac and ;We further show that (i) cells displaying new adhesion, Rac redistribution and injury-derived Ca...