QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s):
Home     Help     Feedback     Subscriptions     Archive     Search     Table of Contents

First published online September 28, 2005

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Related articles in Development Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Crowd control the Dicty way

Dictyostelium discoideum spends most of its life as vegetative amoebae, but, when food becomes limiting, the amoebae stop dividing, aggregate and develop into a mass of spores supported by a stalk. Unexpectedly, Brock and Gomer have now found that growing Dictyostelium cells secrete a protein (called AprA, for autocrine proliferation repressor) that represses their proliferation (see p. 4553). They show that aprA-null cells proliferate faster than wild-type cells, and that purified AprA slows the proliferation of both wild-type and aprA-null cells. However, upon starvation, aprA-null cells make spores less efficiently than wild-type cells do. Overall, these results indicate that there is an evolutionary advantage to slowing proliferation when Dictyostelium cells get crowded. In addition, the researchers suggest that AprA may be part of a Dictyostelium chalone–in metazoa, chalones are secreted autocrine factors thought to control organ size.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

Related articles in Development:

A secreted factor represses cell proliferation in Dictyostelium

Debra A. Brock and Richard H. Gomer
Development 2005 132: 4553-4562. [Abstract] [Full Text]  

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Related articles in Development Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?