Molecular Genetic Analysis of Signal Transduction Pathways Controlling Multicellular Development in Dictyostelium
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
Understanding how cells within a multicellular organism communicate and coordinate cell growth and differentiation is a fundamental goal of modern biology. Cellular communication within an organism is mediated by the extracellular secretion of factors or by direct cell-cell contacts. In both cases, receptors provide the specificity of information transfer by their ability to discriminate between different signal molecules, by their distribution within the organism, and by their ability to interact with and activate specific downstream effectors. Receptors mediate signal transduction via a limited number of distinct second-messenger systems. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that signal transduction processes interact in a complex fashion within the cell to coordinate cell growth and differentiation.
In the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, starvation triggers a series of developmental processes that lead to the formation of a multicellular organism. Although Dictyostelium represents a developmental system that is simpler than the metazoan system, it is...
