Cell Lineage Conflicts in the Cellular Slime Mold, Dictyostelium discoideum

大多数多细胞生物，比如人类，都是由单细胞形成的。 相比之下，社会性变形虫通过聚集来自小区域的单个细胞形成多细胞体。 这种差异使研究人员能够评估系统中生物体内的遗传冲突，该系统可能被证明是社会进化的理想模型系统。 研究人员将描述自然栖息地中细胞的遗传变异，然后研究这些细胞在多细胞个体中聚集在一起时如何相互作用。 他们将评估一些细胞系在其他细胞系中占主导地位的频率，迫使它们成为不育茎的一部分，而不是可育孢子。 不同的细胞谱系将在实验室中结合起来，并使用可变的DNA微卫星位点进行评估。细胞之间如何相互作用是一个重要的问题，它关系到生物学中的许多基本问题。 例如，逃避其他细胞控制并继续分裂的细胞是癌症的特征。 程序性细胞死亡是一种重要的机制，可以清除生物体中错误位置或具有某些缺陷的细胞。 当社会性变形虫形成子实体时，一些细胞死亡，而另一些细胞存活。了解一些细胞逃避程序性细胞死亡过程的过程，并可能迫使其他细胞死亡，这对了解癌症和人类发育疾病的机制具有潜在的相关性。

Most multicellular organisms, like humans, form from a single cell. By contrast, the social amoeba forms a multicellular body by aggregating individual cells from a small area. This difference allows the investigators to evaluate genetic conflicts within an organism in a system that may prove to be an ideal model system for social evolution. The investigators will characterize the genetic variation in cells in a natural habitat, and will then investigate how these cells interact when they come together in a multicellular individuals. They will evaluate how often some cell lines dominate over other cell lines, forcing them to be part of the sterile stalk instead of the fertile spore. Different cell lineages will be combined in the laboratory and evaluated using variable DNAmicrosatellite loci.How cells interact with each other is an important question that bears on many fundamental problems in biology. For example, cells that escape the control of other cells and continue to divide characterize cancer. Programmed cell death is an important mechanism for ridding an organism of cells in the wrong place or that have certain kinds of defects. When the social amoeba forms a fruiting body, some cells die while others live. Understanding the process whereby some cells escape the process of programmed cell death, and perhaps force other cells to die is of potential relevance to mechanisms for understanding cancer, and human developmental diseases.