Robustness of self-organizing chemoattractant field arising from precise pulse induction of its breakdown enzyme: a single-cell level analysis of PDE expression in Dictyostelium.

The oscillation of chemoattractant cyclic AMP (cAMP) in Dictyostelium discoideum is a collective phenomenon that occurs when the basal level of extracellular cAMP exceeds a threshold and invokes cooperative mutual excitation of cAMP synthesis and secretion. For pulses to be relayed from cell to cell repetitively, secreted cAMP must be cleared and brought down to the subthreshold level. One of the main determinants of the oscillatory behavior is thus how much extracellular cAMP is degraded by extracellular phosphodiesterase (PDE). To date, the exact nature of PDE gene regulation remains elusive. Here, we performed live imaging analysis of mRNA transcripts for pdsA--the gene encoding extracellular PDE. Our analysis revealed that pdsA is upregulated during the rising phase of cAMP oscillations. Furthermore, by analyzing isolated cells, we show that expression of pdsA is strictly dependent on the presence of extracellular cAMP. pdsA is induced only at ∼1 nM extracellular cAMP, which is almost identical to the threshold concentration for the cAMP relay response. The observed precise regulation of PDE expression together with degradation of extracellular cAMP by PDE form a dual positive and negative feedback circuit, and model analysis shows that this sets the cAMP level near the threshold concentration for the cAMP relay response for a wide range of adenylyl cyclase activity. The overlap of the thresholds could allow oscillations of chemoattractant cAMP to self-organize at various starving conditions, making its development robust to fluctuations in its environment.