Cell Fusions Regulation and Control

Cell fusions are important to fertilization, placentation, development of skeletal muscle and bone, calcium homeostasis and the immune defence system. Additionally, cell fusions participate in tissue repair and may be important to cancer development and progression. A large number of factors appear to regulate cell fusions, including receptors and ligands, membrane domain organizing proteins, proteases, signaling molecules and fusogenic proteins forming alpha-helical bundles that bring membranes close together. The purpose of the planned volume is to sum up current knowledge about mechanisms regulating and controlling cell fusions. The field has expanded vastly within the past few years and leaders in the field will be invited to contribute with current overviews of their specific areas of knowledge. Attention will be paid both to true fusogens like proteins encoded by the viral (e.g. HIV), caenorhabdidtis (EFF) mammalian and human (e.g. syncytins and Pb-1) genomes as well as to mechanisms regulating the activities of the fusogens. The commitment of cells to fuse represents an irreversible step. It stands to reason that a number of factors controlling and safe-guarding these mechanisms must exist. It seems equally reasonable to assume that many of these mechanisms are redundant in different systems. By bringing together experts working in each their system there is a fair chance that a consensus concerning the mechanistics of cell fusions may develop.

Foreword - Lars-Inge Larsson.- 1 Regulation and control of cell-cell fusions, Lars-Inge Larsson.- 2 Retroviruses and cell fusions: overview, Anders L. Kjeldbjerg, Shervin Bahrami, Finn Skou Pedersen.- 3 Retroviral membrane fusions: regulation by proteolytic processing and cellular factors, Yoshinao Kubo.- 4 A comparative portrait of retroviral fusogens and syncytins, Philippe Pérot, Cécile Montgiraud, Dimitri Lavillette, François Mallet.- 5 Synctins : molecular aspects, Hungwen Chen, Mei-Leng Cheong .- 6 Role of the actin cytoskeleton within FuRMAS during Drosophila myoblast fusions and first functionally conserved factors in vertebrates, Susanne Filiz Önel, Christine Dottermusch, Angela Sickmann, Detlev Buttgereit, Renate Renkawitz-Pohl.- 7 Role of CD9 in sperm-egg fusion and its general role in fusion phenomena, Natsuko Kawano, Yuichiro Harada, Keiichi Yoshida, Mami Miyado, Kenji Miyado.- 8 Gemate binding and fusion, Young-Joo Yi, Shawn W. Zimmerman, Peter Sutovsky.- 9 Mechanisms regulating human trophoblast fusion, Berthold Huppertz, Martin Gauster.- 10 Macrophage fusion: the making of a new cell, Agnès Vignery.- 11 Molecules regulating macrophage fusions, Takeshi Miyamoto, Toshio Suda.- 12 Current progress towards understanding mechanisms of myoblast fusion in mammals, Grace K. Pavlath.- 13 The endogenous envelop protein synctin is involved in myoblast fusion, Bolette Bjerregaard, Jan Fredrik Talts, Lars-Inge Larsson.- 14 Cell Fusion and stem cells, Alain Silk, Anne E. Powell, Paige S. Davies, Melissa H. Wong.- 15 Cell Fusion and dendritic cell-based vaccines, Jianlin Gong, Shigeo Koido.- 16 Cancer cell fusion with myeloid cells: implications for energy metabolism in malignant hybrids, Rossitza Lazova, Ashok K. Chakraborty, John M. Pawelek.- 17 Cell-cell fusions and human endogenous retroviruses in cancer, Reiner Strick, Matthias W. Beckmann, Pamela L. Strissel.- Index.