Project description:In many developmental systems, morphogenesis is coupled with dramatic changes in spatiotemporal gene expression, often orchestrated by the coordinated action of transcription factors. Development of the social soil amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum proceeds through a sequence of morphological and transcriptional changes, but the role of transcription factors in development is not well understood. GtaC, a GATA-type zinc-finger transcription factor, is essential for Dictyostelium development. It decodes pulsatile extracellular cAMP signals during early development and mediates cell-type differentiation at later stages. Here, we studied the developmental regulatory roles of GtaC through the concerted analysis of temporal ChIP- and RNA-sequencing data from strains that carry different alleles of gtaC. We show that GtaC exhibits temporally distinctive DNA-binding patterns throughout early development, accompanied by largely cotemporaneous expression of its target genes. We also show that GtaC binds DNA in two modes. One of these modes exhibits binding preferences for canonical GATA-like sequences, the regulatory consequences accompanying which is predominantly up-regulation of target gene expression. The other binding mode is mostly associated with down-regulation. Among its targets we find transcription factors that are essential for development as well as genes involved in cAMP signaling and cell-type specification. Our results suggest that GtaC is a master regulator that regulates multiple physiological processes during early development, when Dictyostelium transitions from a group of unicellular amoebae to an integrated multicellular organism. Cotemporaneous transcriptional profiling and ChIP sequencing during early Dictyostelium development
Project description:Purpose: To filter genes that may contribute to introcellualr survival of B. bronchiseptica inside Dictyostelium discoideum, the genes that differently expressed when bacteria inside amoebae or in culture medium are selected as target genes.
Project description:Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae feed by ingesting bacteria, then killing them in phagosomes. Ingestion and killing of different bacteria have been shown to rely on largely different molecular mechanisms. One would thus expect that D. discoideum adapts its ingestion and killing machinery when encountering different bacteria. In this study, we investigated by RNA sequencing if and how D. discoideum amoebae respond to the presence of different bacteria by modifying their gene expression patterns. Each bacterial species analyzed induced a specific modification of the transcriptome. Bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, or Mycobacterium marinum induced a specific and different transcriptional response, while Micrococcus luteus did not trigger a significant gene regulation. Although folate has been proposed to be one of the key molecules secreted by bacteria and recognized by hunting amoebae, it elicited a very specific and restricted transcriptional signature, distinct from that triggered by any bacteria analyzed here. Our results indicate that D. discoideum amoebae respond in a highly specific, almost non-overlapping manner to different species of bacteria. We additionally identify specific sets of genes that can be used as reporters of the response of D. discoideum to different bacteria.
Project description:spaA is a Cud-type transcription factor that is essential for spore cell differentiation of Dictyostelium discoideum, a social amoeba. ChIP-seq was performed to identify spaA target genes.
Project description:In many developmental systems, morphogenesis is coupled with dramatic changes in spatiotemporal gene expression, often orchestrated by the coordinated action of transcription factors. Development of the social soil amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum proceeds through a sequence of morphological and transcriptional changes, but the role of transcription factors in development is not well understood. GtaC, a GATA-type zinc-finger transcription factor, is essential for Dictyostelium development. It decodes pulsatile extracellular cAMP signals during early development and mediates cell-type differentiation at later stages. Here, we studied the developmental regulatory roles of GtaC through the concerted analysis of temporal ChIP- and RNA-sequencing data from strains that carry different alleles of gtaC. We show that GtaC exhibits temporally distinctive DNA-binding patterns throughout early development, accompanied by largely cotemporaneous expression of its target genes. We also show that GtaC binds DNA in two modes. One of these modes exhibits binding preferences for canonical GATA-like sequences, the regulatory consequences accompanying which is predominantly up-regulation of target gene expression. The other binding mode is mostly associated with down-regulation. Among its targets we find transcription factors that are essential for development as well as genes involved in cAMP signaling and cell-type specification. Our results suggest that GtaC is a master regulator that regulates multiple physiological processes during early development, when Dictyostelium transitions from a group of unicellular amoebae to an integrated multicellular organism.
Project description:This project investigated the effect of Cln3-deficiency on protein secretion in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum by performing LC-MS/MS on conditioned media harvested from starved WT and cln3- cells.
Project description:Biological oscillations are observed at many levels of cellular organization. In the social amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum, starvation-triggered multicellular development is organized by periodic cAMP waves, which provide both chemoattractant gradients and developmental signals. We report that GtaC, a GATA transcription factor, exhibits rapid nucleocytoplasmic shuttling in response to cAMP waves. This behavior requires coordinated action of a nuclear localization signal and reversible G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-mediated phosphorylation. While both are required for developmental gene expression, receptor occupancy promotes nuclear exit of GtaC, which leads to a transient burst of transcription at each cAMP cycle. We demonstrate that this biological circuit, like an “edge trigger”, filters out high frequency signals and counts those admitted, thereby enabling cells to modulate gene expression according to the dynamic pattern of the external stimuli.
Project description:Biological oscillations are observed at many levels of cellular organization. In the social amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum, starvation-triggered multicellular development is organized by periodic cAMP waves, which provide both chemoattractant gradients and developmental signals. We report that GtaC, a GATA transcription factor, exhibits rapid nucleocytoplasmic shuttling in response to cAMP waves. This behavior requires coordinated action of a nuclear localization signal and reversible G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-mediated phosphorylation. While both are required for developmental gene expression, receptor occupancy promotes nuclear exit of GtaC, which leads to a transient burst of transcription at each cAMP cycle. We demonstrate that this biological circuit, like an M-bM-^@M-^\edge triggerM-bM-^@M-^], filters out high frequency signals and counts those admitted, thereby enabling cells to modulate gene expression according to the dynamic pattern of the external stimuli. Transcriptional profiling during early development of wild-type, gtaC, GFP-GtaC/gtaC, and NLSex-GFP-GtaC/gtaC strains