dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 45, number 25
October 4, 2019

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Abstracts
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Live cell imaging of cell movement and transdifferentiation during 
regeneration of an amputated multicellular body of the social 
amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum

Kurato Mohri, Ryodai Tanaka, Seido Nagano

Department of Bioinformatics, College of Life Sciences, 
Ritsumeikan University


Developmental Biology, in press

The regeneration of lost body parts is a fascinating phenomenon 
exhibited by some multicellular organisms. In social amoebae, such 
as Dictyostelium discoideum, the pseudoplasmodium is a temporary 
migratory multicellular structure with high regeneration ability. It 
consists of future stalk cells (prestalk cells) at the anterior end and 
future spore cells (prespore cells) at the posterior end, and if 
amputated, the remaining cells can rapidly regenerate the lost portion 
within several hours. Details of this regeneration event have been 
extensively documented; however, little is known about the behavior 
of individual cells involved in this process. In this study, we performed 
live cell imaging of cell behavior during regeneration of the excised 
anterior prestalk region. We used cells that specifically express GFP 
in the prestalk cell lineage to examine how the prestalk region is 
regenerated after this region is excised. The current model of prestalk
 regeneration suggests that the progenitors of prestalk cells, known 
 as anterior-like cells (ALCs), which are sparsely distributed in the 
 prespore region, are redistributed to form the new prestalk region. 
 However, we found that the regenerated prestalk region was formed 
 mainly by the transdifferentiation of prespore cells surrounding the 
 excised anterior end, with little clustering of pre-existing ALCs. 
 Furthermore, the movement of randomly distributed labeled cells 
 during regeneration revealed that although the posterior end was 
 deformed and rounded in shape, the relative position of cells along 
 the anterior-posterior axis remained largely unchanged. These results 
 suggest that the original anterior-posterior axis is maintained in 
 posterior bodies and that prespore cells at the anterior side 
 transdifferentiate and regenerate the prestalk region.


submitted by:  Kurato Mohri [[log in to unmask]]
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[End dictyNews, volume 45, number 25]