Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
dictyNews Volume 40 Number 08
dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 40, number 8
March 14, 2014
Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been
accepted for publication by sending them to dicty@northwestern.edu
or by using the form at
http://dictybase.org/db/cgi-bin/dictyBase/abstract_submit.
Back issues of dictyNews, the Dicty Reference database and other
useful information is available at dictyBase - http://dictybase.org.
Follow dictyBase on twitter:
http://twitter.com/dictybase
=========
Abstracts
=========
Nucleocytoplasmic Shuttling of a GATA Transcription Factor Functions as
a Development Timer
Huaqing Cai, Mariko Katoh-Kurasawa, Tetsuya Muramoto, Balaji Santhanam,
Yu Long, Lei Li, Masahiro Ueda, Pablo A. Iglesias, Gad Shaulsky,
Peter N. Devreotes
Science, in press
Biological oscillations are observed at many levels of cellular organization.
In the social amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum, starvation-triggered
multicellular development is organized by periodic adenosine 3',5'-cyclic
monophosphate (cAMP) waves, which provide both chemoattractant
gradients and developmental signals. We report that GtaC, a GATA
transcription factor, exhibits rapid nucleocytoplasmic shuttling in response
to cAMP waves. This behavior requires coordinated action of a nuclear
localization signal and reversible G protein- (heterotrimeric guanine
nucleotideÐbinding protein)Ðcoupled receptor (GPCR)-Ðmediated
phosphorylation. Although both are required for developmental gene
expression, receptor occupancy promotes nuclear exit of GtaC, which
leads to a transient burst of transcription at each cAMP cycle. We
demonstrate that this biological circuit filters out high-frequency signals
and counts those admitted, thereby enabling cells to modulate gene
expression according to the dynamic pattern of the external stimuli.
Submitted by Huaqing Cai [hcai6@jhmi.edu]
==============================================================
[End dictyNews, volume 40, number 8]
