dictyNews

Electronic Edition

Volume 47, number 10

April 30, 2021



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Abstracts

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Role of Epigenetics in Unicellular to Multicellular Transition 

in Dictyostelium 



Simon Yuan Wang, Elizabeth Ann Pollina†, I-Hao Wang†, Lindsay 

Kristina Pino, Henry L. Bushnell, Ken Takashima, Colette Fritsche, 

George Sabin, Benjamin Aaron Garcia, Paul Lieberman Greer, and 

Eric Lieberman Greer*

† These authors contributed equally

* Correspondence: Eric L. Greer ([log in to unmask])





Genome Biology, in press



The evolution of multicellularity is a critical event that remains 

incompletely understood. We use the social amoeba, Dictyostelium 

discoideum, one of the rare organisms that readily transits back 

and forth between both unicellular and multicellular stages, to 

examine the role of epigenetics in regulating multicellularity. While 

transitioning to multicellular states, patterns of H3K4 methylation 

and H3K27 acetylation significantly change. By combining 

transcriptomics, epigenomics, chromatin accessibility, and 

orthologous gene analyses with other unicellular and multicellular 

organisms, we identify 52 conserved genes, which are specifically 

accessible and expressed during multicellular states. We validated 

that four of these genes, including theH3K27 deacetylase hdaD, are 

necessary and that an SMC-like gene,  smcl1, is sufficient for 

multicellularity in Dictyostelium. These results highlight the 

importance of epigenetics in reorganizing chromatin architecture to 

facilitate multicellularity in Dictyostelium discoideum and raise 

exciting possibilities about the role of epigenetics in the evolution 

of multicellularity more broadly. 





submitted by: Simon Yuan Wang [[log in to unmask]]

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