dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 38, number 19
July 27, 2012

Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been
accepted for publication by sending them to dicty@northwestern.edu
or by using the form at
http://dictybase.org/db/cgi-bin/dictyBase/abstract_submit.

Back issues of dictyNews, the Dicty Reference database and other
useful information is available at dictyBase - http://dictybase.org.

Follow dictyBase on twitter:
http://twitter.com/dictybase


=========
Abstracts
=========


The calcineurin dependent transcription factor TacA is involved in 
development and the stress response of Dictyostelium discoideum.

Sascha Thewes, Stefanie Krohn, Anika Schmith, Sergej Herzog, 
Thomas Stach, Barbara Weissenmayer, and Rupert Mutzel.


European Journal of Cell Biology, in press

Calcineurin is an important signalling protein in a plethora of Ca2+-regulated 
cellular processes. In contrast to what is known about the function of 
calcineurin in various organisms, information on calcineurin substrates is still
 limited. Here we describe the identification and characterisation of the 
 transcription factor activated by calcineurin (TacA) in the model organism 
 Dictyostelium discoideum. TacA is a putative zinc-finger transcription factor 
 orthologue of yeast Crz1. In resting unstimulated cells the protein is located 
 in the cytosol and translocates to the nucleus in a calcineurin-dependent 
 manner after Ca2+-stimulation. Nuclear export of TacA is partially dependent 
 on GskA, the Dictyostelium orthologue of mammalian GSK3. The expression 
 of tacA is developmentally regulated with its kinetics roughly paralleling 
 calcineurin regulation. Silencing of tacA via RNAi leads to developmental 
 defects and dysregulation of developmentally regulated and Ca2+-regulated 
 marker genes. Additionally, TacA is involved in the stress response of D. 
 discoideum during development in a separate pathway to the well-known 
 stress response in Dictyostelium via STATc. Finally we provide evidence that 
 TacA is not only an orthologue of yeast Crz1 but also functionally related to 
 mammalian NFAT.


Submitted by Sascha Thewes [sascha.thewes@fu-berlin.de]
==============================================================
[End dictyNews, volume 38, number 19]