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dictyNews Volume 38 Number 19
dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 38, number 19
July 27, 2012
Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been
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Abstracts
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The calcineurin dependent transcription factor TacA is involved in
development and the stress response of Dictyostelium discoideum.
Sascha Thewes, Stefanie Krohn, Anika Schmith, Sergej Herzog,
Thomas Stach, Barbara Weissenmayer, and Rupert Mutzel.
European Journal of Cell Biology, in press
Calcineurin is an important signalling protein in a plethora of Ca2+-regulated
cellular processes. In contrast to what is known about the function of
calcineurin in various organisms, information on calcineurin substrates is still
limited. Here we describe the identification and characterisation of the
transcription factor activated by calcineurin (TacA) in the model organism
Dictyostelium discoideum. TacA is a putative zinc-finger transcription factor
orthologue of yeast Crz1. In resting unstimulated cells the protein is located
in the cytosol and translocates to the nucleus in a calcineurin-dependent
manner after Ca2+-stimulation. Nuclear export of TacA is partially dependent
on GskA, the Dictyostelium orthologue of mammalian GSK3. The expression
of tacA is developmentally regulated with its kinetics roughly paralleling
calcineurin regulation. Silencing of tacA via RNAi leads to developmental
defects and dysregulation of developmentally regulated and Ca2+-regulated
marker genes. Additionally, TacA is involved in the stress response of D.
discoideum during development in a separate pathway to the well-known
stress response in Dictyostelium via STATc. Finally we provide evidence that
TacA is not only an orthologue of yeast Crz1 but also functionally related to
mammalian NFAT.
Submitted by Sascha Thewes [sascha.thewes@fu-berlin.de]
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[End dictyNews, volume 38, number 19]
