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Review
. 2024 Jul 10;14(7):830.
doi: 10.3390/biom14070830.

Ion Signaling in Cell Motility and Development in Dictyostelium discoideum

Yusuke V Morimoto  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Ion Signaling in Cell Motility and Development in Dictyostelium discoideum

Yusuke V Morimoto. Biomolecules. .

Abstract

Cell-to-cell communication is fundamental to the organization and functionality of multicellular organisms. Intercellular signals orchestrate a variety of cellular responses, including gene expression and protein function changes, and contribute to the integrated functions of individual tissues. Dictyostelium discoideum is a model organism for cell-to-cell interactions mediated by chemical signals and multicellular formation mechanisms. Upon starvation, D. discoideum cells exhibit coordinated cell aggregation via cyclic adenosine 3',5'-monophosphate (cAMP) gradients and chemotaxis, which facilitates the unicellular-to-multicellular transition. During this process, the calcium signaling synchronizes with the cAMP signaling. The resulting multicellular body exhibits organized collective migration and ultimately forms a fruiting body. Various signaling molecules, such as ion signals, regulate the spatiotemporal differentiation patterns within multicellular bodies. Understanding cell-to-cell and ion signaling in Dictyostelium provides insight into general multicellular formation and differentiation processes. Exploring cell-to-cell and ion signaling enhances our understanding of the fundamental biological processes related to cell communication, coordination, and differentiation, with wide-ranging implications for developmental biology, evolutionary biology, biomedical research, and synthetic biology. In this review, I discuss the role of ion signaling in cell motility and development in D. discoideum.

Keywords: Dictyostelium discoideum; calcium signaling; cell differentiation; cell motility; intracellular pH; ion signaling; signal transduction.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum. During the unicellular phase, cells proliferate as amoebae by feeding on bacteria. When the cells become starved, they form streams and aggregate due to the chemotaxis toward the cAMP they produce. The cells form a “slug”, which is a multicellular body consisting of approximately 100,000 cells, and begin to migrate. Eventually, they form a fruiting body comprising spores and a stalk. The spores germinate and revert to amoeboid cells upon reaching a suitable environment.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Calcium signaling in response to mechanical stimuli in a Dictyostelium discoideum slug. (A) A slug of D. discoideum cells expressing the calcium probe, GCaMP6s, was placed between a coverslip and an agar sheet and subjected to mechanical pressure by pushing the agar sheet with a plastic stick. The fluorescence signal of GCaMP6s was observed under a fluorescence microscope. (B) A representative time course of normalized fluorescence intensity of GCaMP6s in a slug after mechanical stimulation (solid green line), demonstrating an early peak dependent on the extracellular Ca2+ influx (dashed black line) and a later peak dependent on the intracellular vesicles’ Ca2+ flux (dashed orange line) [25].
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