Dictyostelium discoideum slugs migrating in the absence of external stimuli tend to continue migrating in the original randomly 'chosen' direction. Spontaneous deviations from the starting direction accumulate with time at a rate that measures the 'physiological noise' in the slugs' steering mechanism. Most of the spontaneous turning signals arise in the transduction chain 'downstream' of the c...

Cells use phagocytosis and macropinocytosis to internalise bulk material, which in phagotrophic organisms supplies the nutrients necessary for growth. Wildtype Dictyostelium amoebae feed on bacteria, but for decades laboratory work has relied on axenic mutants that can also grow on liquid media. We used forward genetics to identify the causative gene underlying this phenotype. This gene encodes...

The transition from a unicellular to a multicellular lifestyle has occurred multiple times—most notably in the lineages leading to plants, animals, and fungi. How this transition is made, however, has remained a major question among biologists, and new evidence may come from an unlikely quarter: The study of single-celled amoebae. In plants, animals, and fungi, dividing cells remain attached to...

Motile activities such as chemotaxis and phagocytosis, which occur in Dictyostelium cells lacking myosin II, may be dependent upon myosin I. To begin to explore this possibility, we have engineered a disruption of the Dictyostelium myosin I heavy chain (DMIHC) gene described recently (Jung, G., C. L. Saxe III, A. R. Kimmel, and J. A. Hammer III. 1989. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 86:6186-6190). ...

Huntingtin is a large HEAT repeat protein first identified in humans, where a polyglutamine tract expansion near the amino terminus causes a gain-of-function mechanism that leads to selective neuronal loss in Huntington's disease (HD). Genetic evidence in humans and knock-in mouse models suggests that this gain-of-function involves an increase or deregulation of some aspect of huntingtin's norm...

Myosin II heavy chain (MHC)-specific protein kinase C (MHC-PKC) isolated from the ameba, Dictyostelium discoideum, regulates myosin II assembly and localization in response to the chemoattractant cAMP (Abu-Elneel et al. 1996. J. Biol. Chem. 271:977- 984). Recent studies have indicated that cAMP-induced cGMP accumulation plays a role in the regulation of myosin II phosphorylation and localizatio...

Cellular slime moulds (Dictyosteloids) are characterised by at least two different modes of slug migration. Most species, e.g. Dictyostelium mucoroides, produce a stalk continuously during slug migration, while a few species, e.g. Dictyostelium discoideum are characterised by stalk-less slug migration and only produce a stalk upon culmination. Experiments on D. discoideum and theoretical model ...

Mitochondrial function is dependent upon mitochondrial structure which is in turn dependent upon mitochondrial dynamics, including fission, fusion, and motility. Here we examined the relationship between mitochondrial dynamics and the cytoskeleton in Dictyostelium discoideum. Using time-lapse analysis, we quantified mitochondrial fission, fusion, and motility in the presence of cytoskeleton dis...

Human patients with mitochondrial diseases are more susceptible to bacterial infections, particularly of the respiratory tract. To investigate the susceptibility of mitochondrially diseased cells to an intracellular bacterial respiratory pathogen, we exploited the advantages of Dictyostelium discoideum as an established model for mitochondrial disease and for Legionella pneumophila pathogenesis...