Received: 22 September 2018 | Accepted: 7 December 2018 DOI: 10.1002/jcp.28160 REVIEW ARTICLE The basics of epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT): A study from a structure, dynamics, and functional perspective Vishal Das 1 | Sourya Bhattacharya 2 | Channakeshavaiah Chikkaputtaiah 1 | Saugata Hazra 2 | Mintu Pal 1 1 Biological Sciences and Technology Division (Biotechnology Group), CSIR‐North East Institute of Science and Technology, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Jorhat, Assam, India 2 Department of Biotechnology, Centre for Nanotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India Correspondence Dr. Saugata Hazra, Department of Biotechnology, Centre for Nanotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), Roorkee, Uttarakhand 247667, India. Email: shazrfbt@iitr.ac.in Dr. Mintu Pal, Biological Sciences and Technology Division (Biotechnology Group), CSIR‐North East Institute of Science and Technology, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Jorhat, Assam 785006, India. Email: mpal24@yahoo.com Funding information SERB‐DST, Govt. of India, Grant/Award Number: SB/S2/RJN‐087/2014 Abstract Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a key step in transdifferentiation process in solid cancer development. Forthcoming evidence suggest that the stratified program transforms polarized, immotile epithelial cells to migratory mesenchymal cells associated with enhancement of breast cancer stemness, metastasis, and drug resistance. It involves primarily several signaling pathways, such as transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β), cadherin, notch, plasminogen activator protein inhibitor, urokinase plasminogen activator, and WNT/beta catenin pathways. However, current understanding on the crosstalk of multisignaling pathways and assemblies of key transcription factors remain to be explored. In this review, we focus on the crosstalk of signal transduction pathways linked to the current therapeutic and drug development strategies. We have also performed the computational modeling on indepth the structure and conformational dynamic studies of regulatory proteins and analyze molecular interactions with their associate factors to understand the complicated process of EMT in breast cancer progression and metastasis. Electro- static potential surfaces have been analyzed that help in optimization of electrostatic interactions between the protein and its ligand. Therefore, understanding the biological implications underlying the EMT process through molecular biology with biocomputation and structural biology approaches will enable the development of new therapeutic strategies to sensitize tumors to conventional therapy and suppress their metastatic phenotype. KEYWORDS EMT, matrix metalloproteinases, signaling pathways, stem cells, structure and dynamics studies, transformation growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) 1 | INTRODUCTION Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women globally, whereas about 90% of death of patients with breast cancer is caused by invasion and metastasis that are two important features of epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) (Pantel & Brakenhoff, 2004; Elzamly et al., 2018; Sotiriou et al., 2003). EMT is link up with a loosening of intracellular tight junctions and disruption of contact between cell to cell, hence the cells acquire the mesenchymal morphology. After that, the cells gain the ability to renew themselves and to increase in heterogeneous subpopulation which amplifies motility of the cells after which it releases cells from the site of origin. J Cell Physiol. 2019;1–21. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcp © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1