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dictyNews Volume 31 Number 11
dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 31, number 11
October 3, 2008
Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been
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or by using the form at
http://dictybase.org/db/cgi-bin/dictyBase/abstract_submit.
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Back issues of dictyNews, the Dicty Reference database and other
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Abstracts
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Kin Discrimination Increases with Genetic Distance in a Social Amoeba
Elizabeth A. Ostrowski1*, Mariko Katoh2*, Gad Shaulsky2, David C. Queller1,
Joan E. Strassmann1
1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice University,
Houston, TX 7005
2. Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine,
Houston, TX 77030
*Contributed equally to this work.
PLoS Biology, in press
In the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, thousands of cells
aggregate upon starvation to form a multicellular fruiting body, and
approximately 20% of them die to form a stalk that benefits the others.
The aggregative nature of multicellular development makes the cells
vulnerable to exploitation by cheaters, and the potential for cheating is
indeed high. Cells might avoid being victimized if they can discriminate
among individuals and avoid those that are genetically different. We tested
how widely social amoebae cooperate by mixing isolates from different
localities that cover most of their natural range. We show that different
isolates partially exclude one another during aggregation, and there is a
positive relationship between the extent of this exclusion and the genetic
distance between strains. Our findings demonstrate that D. discoideum
cells co-aggregate more with genetically similar than dissimilar individuals,
suggesting the existence of a mechanism that discerns the degree of
genetic similarity between individuals in this social microorganism.
Submitted by: Elizabeth Ostrowski [ostrowski@rice.edu]
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How human leukocytes track down and destroy pathogens: Lessons learned from
the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum
Tian Jin1*, Xuehua Xu2, Jun Fang3, Nilgun Isik1, Jianshe Yan1, Joseph A.
Brzostowski4, and Dale Hereld5
Immunologic Research, in press
Human leukocytes, including macrophages and neutrophils, are phagocytic
immune cells that capture and engulf pathogens and subsequently destroy
them in intracellular vesicles. To accomplish this vital task, these
leukocytes utilize two basic cell behaviors –– chemotaxis for chasing down
infectious pathogens and phagocytosis for destroying them. The molecular
mechanisms controlling these behaviors are not well understood for immune
cells. Interestingly, a soil amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, use these
same behaviors to pursue and injest its bacterial food source and to organize
its multi-cellular development. Consequently, studies of this model system
have provided and will continue to provide us with mechanistic insights into
the chemotaxis and phagocytosis of immune cells. Here, we review recent
research in these areas that have been conducted in the Chemotaxis Signal
Section of NIAID's Laboratory of Immunogenetics.
Submitted by: Tian Jin [tjin@niaid.nih.gov]
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[End dictyNews, volume 31, number 11]
