The multicellularity genes of dictyostelid social amoebas

Gernot Glöckner, Hajara M. Lawal, Marius Felder, Reema Singh, Gail Singer, Cornelis J. Weijer and Pauline Schaap ()
Additional contact information
Gernot Glöckner: Institute of Biochemistry I, Medical Faculty, University of Cologne
Hajara M. Lawal: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee
Marius Felder: Leibniz Institute on Aging
Reema Singh: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee
Gail Singer: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee
Cornelis J. Weijer: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee
Pauline Schaap: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract The evolution of multicellularity enabled specialization of cells, but required novel signalling mechanisms for regulating cell differentiation. Early multicellular organisms are mostly extinct and the origins of these mechanisms are unknown. Here using comparative genome and transcriptome analysis across eight uni- and multicellular amoebozoan genomes, we find that 80% of proteins essential for the development of multicellular Dictyostelia are already present in their unicellular relatives. This set is enriched in cytosolic and nuclear proteins, and protein kinases. The remaining 20%, unique to Dictyostelia, mostly consists of extracellularly exposed and secreted proteins, with roles in sensing and recognition, while several genes for synthesis of signals that induce cell-type specialization were acquired by lateral gene transfer. Across Dictyostelia, changes in gene expression correspond more strongly with phenotypic innovation than changes in protein functional domains. We conclude that the transition to multicellularity required novel signals and sensors rather than novel signal processing mechanisms.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12085 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:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12085

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12085

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 ().