CSM News
Electronic Edition
Volume 2, number 5
January 29, 1994

Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been
accepted for publication by sending them to CSM-News@worms.cmsbio.nwu.edu.

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Abstracts
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Ammonia hypersensitivity of slugger mutants of D. discoideum.

Kathryn Gee, Frances Russell and Julian Gross
Biochemistry, Oxford.

J. Cell Science in press.

The weak base ammonia inhibits aggregation and culmination of
wild-type amoebae of Dictyostelium discoideum. Here we have examined
its effect on a series of "slugger" mutants previously assigned to 10
complementation groups, and so-called because they remain as slugs for
extended periods.  We show that the mutants accumulate normal levels
of ammonia and hence may be abnormally susceptible to the ammonia they
produce. In agreement with this we find that representatives of the
slugger complementation groups are hypersensitive to ammonia
inhibition at three clearly recognisable morphological stages of
development: aggregation, tip formation and culmination. This finding
suggests that a common ammonia- sensitive process underlies each of
these developmental events.

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