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Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds

BACKGROUND: Multicellularity in cellular slime molds is achieved by aggregation of several hundreds to thousands of cells. In the model slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, adenosine is known to increase the aggregate size and its antagonist caffeine reduces the aggregate size. However, it is not cl...

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Autores principales: Jaiswal, Pundrik, Soldati, Thierry, Thewes, Sascha, Baskar, Ramamurthy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22269093
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-213X-12-5
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author Jaiswal, Pundrik
Soldati, Thierry
Thewes, Sascha
Baskar, Ramamurthy
author_facet Jaiswal, Pundrik
Soldati, Thierry
Thewes, Sascha
Baskar, Ramamurthy
author_sort Jaiswal, Pundrik
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Multicellularity in cellular slime molds is achieved by aggregation of several hundreds to thousands of cells. In the model slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, adenosine is known to increase the aggregate size and its antagonist caffeine reduces the aggregate size. However, it is not clear if the actions of adenosine and caffeine are evolutionarily conserved among other slime molds known to use structurally unrelated chemoattractants. We have examined how the known factors affecting aggregate size are modulated by adenosine and caffeine. RESULT: Adenosine and caffeine induced the formation of large and small aggregates respectively, in evolutionarily distinct slime molds known to use diverse chemoattractants for their aggregation. Due to its genetic tractability, we chose D. discoideum to further investigate the factors affecting aggregate size. The changes in aggregate size are caused by the effect of the compounds on several parameters such as cell number and size, cell-cell adhesion, cAMP signal relay and cell counting mechanisms. While some of the effects of these two compounds are opposite to each other, interestingly, both compounds increase the intracellular glucose level and strengthen cell-cell adhesion. These compounds also inhibit the synthesis of cAMP phosphodiesterase (PdsA), weakening the relay of extracellular cAMP signal. Adenosine as well as caffeine rescue mutants impaired in stream formation (pde4(- )and pdiA(-)) and colony size (smlA(- )and ctnA(-)) and restore their parental aggregate size. CONCLUSION: Adenosine increased the cell division timings thereby making large number of cells available for aggregation and also it marginally increased the cell size contributing to large aggregate size. Reduced cell division rates and decreased cell size in the presence of caffeine makes the aggregates smaller than controls. Both the compounds altered the speed of the chemotactic amoebae causing a variation in aggregate size. Our data strongly suggests that cytosolic glucose and extracellular cAMP levels are the other major determinants regulating aggregate size and pattern. Importantly, the aggregation process is conserved among different lineages of cellular slime molds despite using unrelated signalling molecules for aggregation.
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spelling pubmed-33412162012-05-02 Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds Jaiswal, Pundrik Soldati, Thierry Thewes, Sascha Baskar, Ramamurthy BMC Dev Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Multicellularity in cellular slime molds is achieved by aggregation of several hundreds to thousands of cells. In the model slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, adenosine is known to increase the aggregate size and its antagonist caffeine reduces the aggregate size. However, it is not clear if the actions of adenosine and caffeine are evolutionarily conserved among other slime molds known to use structurally unrelated chemoattractants. We have examined how the known factors affecting aggregate size are modulated by adenosine and caffeine. RESULT: Adenosine and caffeine induced the formation of large and small aggregates respectively, in evolutionarily distinct slime molds known to use diverse chemoattractants for their aggregation. Due to its genetic tractability, we chose D. discoideum to further investigate the factors affecting aggregate size. The changes in aggregate size are caused by the effect of the compounds on several parameters such as cell number and size, cell-cell adhesion, cAMP signal relay and cell counting mechanisms. While some of the effects of these two compounds are opposite to each other, interestingly, both compounds increase the intracellular glucose level and strengthen cell-cell adhesion. These compounds also inhibit the synthesis of cAMP phosphodiesterase (PdsA), weakening the relay of extracellular cAMP signal. Adenosine as well as caffeine rescue mutants impaired in stream formation (pde4(- )and pdiA(-)) and colony size (smlA(- )and ctnA(-)) and restore their parental aggregate size. CONCLUSION: Adenosine increased the cell division timings thereby making large number of cells available for aggregation and also it marginally increased the cell size contributing to large aggregate size. Reduced cell division rates and decreased cell size in the presence of caffeine makes the aggregates smaller than controls. Both the compounds altered the speed of the chemotactic amoebae causing a variation in aggregate size. Our data strongly suggests that cytosolic glucose and extracellular cAMP levels are the other major determinants regulating aggregate size and pattern. Importantly, the aggregation process is conserved among different lineages of cellular slime molds despite using unrelated signalling molecules for aggregation. BioMed Central 2012-01-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3341216/ /pubmed/22269093 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-213X-12-5 Text en Copyright ©2012 Jaiswal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Jaiswal, Pundrik
Soldati, Thierry
Thewes, Sascha
Baskar, Ramamurthy
Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
title Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
title_full Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
title_fullStr Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
title_full_unstemmed Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
title_short Regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
title_sort regulation of aggregate size and pattern by adenosine and caffeine in cellular slime molds
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22269093
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-213X-12-5
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