Guilty by association: some collagen II mutants alter the formation of ECM as a result of atypical interaction with fibronectin

Among the structural components of extracellular matrices (ECM) fibrillar collagens play a critical role, and single amino acid substitutions in these proteins lead to pathological changes in tissues in which they are expressed. Employing a biologically relevant experimental model consisting of cells expressing R75C, R519C, R789C, and G853E procollagen II mutants, we found that the R789C mutation causing a decrease in the thermostability of collagen not only alters individual collagen molecules and collagen fibrils, but also has a negative impact on fibronectin. We propose that thermolabile collagen molecules are able to bind to fibronectin, thereby altering intracellular and extracellular processes in which fibronectin takes part, and we postulate that such an atypical interaction could change the architecture of the ECM of affected tissues in patients harboring mutations in genes encoding fibrillar collagens.