article · 19/05/2025
Continuous emergence of phototaxis in Dictyostelium discoideum
Résumé
The evolutionary transition from uni- to multicellularity is associated with new properties resulting from collective cell behavior. The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum alternating between individual cells and multicellular forms of varying size provides a powerful biological system to characterize such emergent properties. Multicellular forms coined slugs have long been described as chemotactic towards cAMP, and also as phototactic. While chemotaxis is also well-documented at the single-cell level, which explains slug chemotaxis, we asked whether slug phototaxis is an emergent property of multicellularity. For this, we developed an automated microscopy setup to quantify and compare the migration trajectories of single cells and slugs moving in the dark or illuminated with lateral light. We find that single cells, either extracted from phototactic slugs or taken prior to multicellular aggregation, are not phototactic, implying that slug phototaxis results from interactions between cells that lack this property. Further, by analysing slugs composed of a varying number of cells, we find that phototaxis efficiency increases continuously with slug size. Cell-cell interactions combined with self-organization are thus key elements for this property to emerge.
Citer cet article
Genettais, D., Bernard, C., Geoffroy, F., Nizak, C., & Adiba, S. (2025). Continuous emergence of phototaxis in Dictyostelium discoideum. PLOS One, 20(5), e0321614. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321614@article{Genettais2025_474,
author = {Genettais, Damien and Bernard, Charles and Geoffroy, Félix and Nizak, Clément and Adiba, Sandrine},
year = {2025},
month = {5},
title = {Continuous emergence of phototaxis in Dictyostelium discoideum},
journal = {PLOS One},
volume = {20},
number = {5},
pages = {e0321614},
abstract = {The evolutionary transition from uni- to multicellularity is associated with new properties resulting from collective cell behavior. The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum alternating between individual cells and multicellular forms of varying size provides a powerful biological system to characterize such emergent properties. Multicellular forms coined slugs have long been described as chemotactic towards cAMP, and also as phototactic. While chemotaxis is also well-documented at the single-cell level, which explains slug chemotaxis, we asked whether slug phototaxis is an emergent property of multicellularity. For this, we developed an automated microscopy setup to quantify and compare the migration trajectories of single cells and slugs moving in the dark or illuminated with lateral light. We find that single cells, either extracted from phototactic slugs or taken prior to multicellular aggregation, are not phototactic, implying that slug phototaxis results from interactions between cells that lack this property. Further, by analysing slugs composed of a varying number of cells, we find that phototaxis efficiency increases continuously with slug size. Cell-cell interactions combined with self-organization are thus key elements for this property to emerge.},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0321614},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0321614},
}TY - JOUR
AU - Genettais, Damien
AU - Bernard, Charles
AU - Geoffroy, Félix
AU - Nizak, Clément
AU - Adiba, Sandrine
PY - 2025
DA - 2025/05/19
TI - Continuous emergence of phototaxis in Dictyostelium discoideum
JO - PLOS One
VL - 20
IS - 5
AB - The evolutionary transition from uni- to multicellularity is associated with new properties resulting from collective cell behavior. The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum alternating between individual cells and multicellular forms of varying size provides a powerful biological system to characterize such emergent properties. Multicellular forms coined slugs have long been described as chemotactic towards cAMP, and also as phototactic. While chemotaxis is also well-documented at the single-cell level, which explains slug chemotaxis, we asked whether slug phototaxis is an emergent property of multicellularity. For this, we developed an automated microscopy setup to quantify and compare the migration trajectories of single cells and slugs moving in the dark or illuminated with lateral light. We find that single cells, either extracted from phototactic slugs or taken prior to multicellular aggregation, are not phototactic, implying that slug phototaxis results from interactions between cells that lack this property. Further, by analysing slugs composed of a varying number of cells, we find that phototaxis efficiency increases continuously with slug size. Cell-cell interactions combined with self-organization are thus key elements for this property to emerge.
SP - e0321614
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0321614
UR - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0321614
ER -