and Bissell, 2007). Our data also show alcohol-stimulated ERK1/2 activation through the EGFR. Overexpression of ERK1/2 also promotes EMT and promoter analysis of Snail reveals a key stimulatory role for ERK1/2 (Barbera et al., 2004, Schramek et al., 2003). In addition, our data show that alcohol stimulates phosphorylation/activation of Snail at Ser246 probably by PAK1(Yang et al., 2005). EGFR signaling has also been shown to activate PAK1(Kumar et al., 2006). In further support of a role for EGFR-EMT signaling in our model, an EGFR inhibitor also inhibited alcohol stimulated cell migration in our study. Therefore data from others as well as our own data support a role for alcohol-stimulation of EGFR signaling in activation of Snail nuclear localization and mRNA expression and subsequent promotion of EMT.
