dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 40, number 8
March 14, 2014

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=========
Abstracts
=========


Nucleocytoplasmic Shuttling of a GATA Transcription Factor Functions as 
a Development Timer

Huaqing Cai, Mariko Katoh-Kurasawa, Tetsuya Muramoto, Balaji Santhanam, 
Yu Long, Lei Li, Masahiro Ueda, Pablo A. Iglesias, Gad Shaulsky, 
Peter N. Devreotes


Science, in press

Biological oscillations are observed at many levels of cellular organization.
In the social amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum, starvation-triggered 
multicellular development is organized by periodic adenosine 3',5'-cyclic 
monophosphate (cAMP) waves, which provide both chemoattractant 
gradients and developmental signals. We report that GtaC, a GATA 
transcription factor, exhibits rapid nucleocytoplasmic shuttling in response 
to cAMP waves. This behavior requires coordinated action of a nuclear 
localization signal and reversible G protein- (heterotrimeric guanine 
nucleotideÐbinding protein)Ðcoupled receptor (GPCR)-Ðmediated 
phosphorylation. Although both are required for developmental gene 
expression, receptor occupancy promotes nuclear exit of GtaC, which 
leads to a transient burst of transcription at each cAMP cycle. We 
demonstrate that this biological circuit filters out high-frequency signals 
and counts those admitted, thereby enabling cells to modulate gene 
expression according to the dynamic pattern of the external stimuli.


Submitted by Huaqing Cai [hcai6@jhmi.edu]
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[End dictyNews, volume 40, number 8]