Molecular principles of cell movements in Dictyostelium discoideum

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Directed cell motion during chemotaxis along a chemical gradient is a ubiquitous phenomenon, found in many organisms and specialized cells during e.g. development, cell aggregation, inflammation, angiogenesis, wound healing etc.. The set of molecular components necessary for coordinated directed cell movement is certainly very large and might be as complex as the crosstalk between the numerous proteins at focal adhesions. At present, only a small but steadily increasing number of proteins is known to be involved in cellular motility at the moving front of Dictyostelium amoebae, currently the best model system for molecular studies on directed cell movement. The available data point out that an extensive crosstalk between proteins below the plasma membrane regulates directed cell motility and that especially distinct binding domains like pleckstrin-homology, poly-proline, actin-binding, PIP2-binding, or WD domains are directly involved in the targeted localization of soluble factors. The proteins with impact on directed cell movement will be identified by scanning data from the current Dictyostelium genome projects, fusing the genes of interest to GFP and analyzing the subcellular redistribution of tagged gene products during chemotactic motility.