Model protists

Vibrio cholerae cells are taken up by protozoa and expelled in food vacuoles, enhancing bacterial environmental survival and infectiousness in mice.

Present understanding of Plasmodium vivax biology is hampered by its inability to grow in vitro. Here, the authors developed an in vitro culture of its simian counterpart, P. cynomolgi, which shares morphological and phenotypic similarities with P. vivax, initiating a new phase in vivax research.

Senoo et al. show that, in response to chemoattractant stimulation, phosphorylated Rho–GDP in complex with Ras–GTP and mTORC2 promotes AKT phosphorylation to mediate cell migration.

Hidenori Hashimura et al. show that cAMP-mediated signaling changes from propagating waves to a steady state at a multicellular stage of amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. This study suggests that cAMP oscillation is not required for collective cell migration despite its importance at a unicellular stage.

Development involves dynamic transcriptional changes. By serial ChIP- and RNA-sequencing, here, the authors show that GtaC, a GATA type transcription factor, exhibits temporally distinctive DNA binding and regulation of gene expression concordant with the development in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.