GPCR-controlled chemotaxis in Dictyostelium discoideum.

Dictyostelium discoideum has been chosen as the key model organism for the study of eukaryotic chemotaxis. Studies in this lower eukaryotic organism have allowed us to discover eukaryotic chemotaxis behavior and to gradually understand the mechanism of chemotaxis. Investigations in this simple organism often guide the direction of chemotaxis studies in areas such as forming concepts, discovering molecular components, revealing pathways and networks. The cooperation between experimental approaches and computational modeling has helped us to comprehend the signaling network as a system. To further reveal the relationships among the molecular mechanisms of individual signaling steps, a continuous interplay between model development and refinement and experimental testing and verification will be useful. This article focuses on a chemoattractant G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)/G-protein gradient sensing machinery, which is monitored by PIP(3) responses and investigated by the interplay between live cell imaging experiments and computational modeling. We believe that such an approach will lead to a much better understanding of GPCR-controlled chemotaxis of all eukaryotic cells.