Nhe1 is essential for potassium but not calcium facilitation of cell motility and the monovalent cation requirement for chemotactic orientation in Dictyostelium discoideum.

In Dictyostelium discoideum, extracellular K+ or Ca2+ at a concentration of 40 or 20 mM, respectively, facilitates motility in the absence or presence of a spatial gradient of chemoattractant. Facilitation results in maximum velocity, cellular elongation, persistent translocation, suppression of lateral pseudopod formation, and myosin II localization in the posterior cortex. A lower threshold concentration of 15 mM K+ or Na or 5 mM Ca2+ is required for chemotactic orientation. Although the common buffer solutions used by D. discoideum researchers to study chemotaxis contain sufficient concentrations of cations for chemotactic orientation, the majority contain insufficient levels to facilitate motility. Here it has been demonstrated that Nhe1, a plasma membrane protein, is required for K+ but not Ca2+ facilitation of cell motility and for the lower K+ but not Ca2+ requirement for chemotactic orientation.