Fibronectin at a glance

Fibronectin (FN) mediates a wide variety of cellular interactions with the extracellular matrix (ECM) and plays important roles in cell adhesion,migration, growth and differentiation(Mosher, 1989;Carsons, 1989;Hynes, 1990;Yamada and Clark, 1996). FN is widely expressed by multiple cell types and is critically important in vertebrate development, as demonstrated by the early embryonic lethality of mice with targeted inactivation of the FN gene(George et al., 1993). Although FN has been studied for more than two decades, this remarkably complex molecule is still the subject of exciting discoveries, such as finding new integrin- and heparin-binding sites(Mostafavi-Pour et al., 2001;Liao et al., 2002) or even a…