Rectified directional sensing in long-range cell migration

Akihiko Nakajima, Shuji Ishihara, Daisuke Imoto and Satoshi Sawai ()
Additional contact information
Akihiko Nakajima: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo
Shuji Ishihara: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo
Daisuke Imoto: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo
Satoshi Sawai: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract How spatial and temporal information are integrated to determine the direction of cell migration remains poorly understood. Here, by precise microfluidics emulation of dynamic chemoattractant waves, we demonstrate that, in Dictyostelium, directional movement as well as activation of small guanosine triphosphatase Ras at the leading edge is suppressed when the chemoattractant concentration is decreasing over time. This ‘rectification’ of directional sensing occurs only at an intermediate range of wave speed and does not require phosphoinositide-3-kinase or F-actin. From modelling analysis, we show that rectification arises naturally in a single-layered incoherent feedforward circuit with zero-order ultrasensitivity. The required stimulus time-window predicts ~5 s transient for directional sensing response close to Ras activation and inhibitor diffusion typical for protein in the cytosol. We suggest that the ability of Dictyostelium cells to move only in the wavefront is closely associated with rectification of adaptive response combined with local activation and global inhibition.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6367 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms6367

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6367

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().