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Cell biology

A cell for all reasons

Nature volume 401, pages 440–441 (1999)Cite this article

Nature has come up with a tremendous variety of organisms with diverse shapes, sizes and life styles that nonetheless all work on a common framework of cellular mechanics. To understand these shared mechanics, few experimental organisms offer the versatility of the soil amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Growing cells of this eukaryote make a living asasocial unicellular phagocytes, voraciously engulfing bacteria or yeast, and they can double their numbers in as little as four hours. When starved, they perform an about-face, aggregate into groups of up to a half a million cells, and develop as multicellular organisms.

Scientists who work with Dictyostelium metFootnote 1 last month to discuss the latest research on topics as diverse as signal transduction, macropinocytosis, centrosome separation, and the involvement of factors such as STATs, NF-κB and Myb in gene transcription. A Dictyostelium Genome Project is under way (see Box 1), and the ability to recover genes electronically rather than by laborious probing of clone libraries has already revolutionized the way Dictyostelium is studied.

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Figure 1: Localization of signalling events in Dictyostelium cells undergoing chemotaxis.

Notes

  1. *International Dictyostelium Conference, Bar Harbor, Maine, 14–19 August 1999. http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~knecht/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, 92093, California, USA

    William F. Loomis

  2. School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Robert H. Insall

Authors
  1. William F. Loomis
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  2. Robert H. Insall
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Loomis, W., Insall, R. A cell for all reasons. Nature 401, 440–441 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/46713

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