Abstract
Chemotaxis describes directional motility along ambient chemical gradients and has important roles in human physiology and pathology. Typical chemotactic cells, such as neutrophils and Dictyostelium cells, can detect spatial differences in chemical gradients over a background concentration of a 105 scale. Studies of Dictyostelium cells have elucidated the molecular mechanisms of gradient sensing involving G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling. GPCR transduces spatial information through its cognate heterotrimeric G protein as a guanine nucleotide change factor (GEF). More recently, studies have revealed unconventional regulation of heterotrimeric G protein in the gradient sensing. In this review, we explain how multiple mechanisms of GPCR signaling ensure the broad range sensing of chemical gradients in Dictyostelium cells as a model for eukaryotic chemotaxis.
Highlights
Chemotaxis describes the directional migration of cells in response to chemical gradients
Broad range chemotaxis is important for the physiology of Dictyostelium cells and human cells; for example, starved Dictyostelium cells and mammalian neutrophils are efficiently recruited to the center of aggregates and to tissue damage or infection sites from the blood circulation, respectively
It was shown more than 30 years ago that chemotactic cells show directional movement over broad ranges, the mechanism has only been revealed in the past several years using D. discoideum cells as a model organism
Summary
Chemotaxis describes the directional migration of cells in response to chemical gradients. It is required for many essential physiological processes including early embryogenesis, wound healing, immune responses (Sonnemann and Bement, 2011; Trepat et al, 2012; Nourshargh and Alon, 2014; de Oliveira et al, 2016; Shellard and Mayor, 2016; Norden and Lecaudey, 2019) and more. Dictyostelium discoideum cells as well as their evolutionally distant cells, mammalian neutrophils, are common model systems for the study of chemotaxis mechanisms (Artemenko et al, 2014; Thomas et al, 2018). These cells move fast, a phenomenon known as amoeboid movement. D. discoideum cells use chemotaxis in their lifecycle; for example, folate chemotaxis is used to forage for bacteria and chemotaxis to 3 ,5 -cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), which
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