| Abstract: | During slime mold development, cells acquire the capacity to rapidly recapitulate morphogenesis in roughly a tenth the original time. When developing cells are disaggregated and refed, they completely loss this capacity in a rapid and synchronous step referred to as the “erasure event.” The erasure event sets in motion a program of dedifferentiation during which developmentally acquired functions are lost at different times. In this report, we describe the phenotype of HI4, which is a mutant partially defective in the dedifferentiation program but normal in all aspects of growth, morphogenesis, and rapid recapitulation. HI4 cells progress through the erasure event, losing in a relatively normal fashion (I) the capacity to rapidly recapitulate later stages of morphogenesis, (2) the capacity to release a cAMP signal, and (3) the capacity to respond chemotactically to a cAMP signal. However, erased HI4 cells abnormally retain the capacity to rapidly reaggregate, even though they have lost chemotactic functions. Erased HI4 cells also abnormally retain EDTA-resistant cohesion (contact sites A) and the surface glycoprotein gp80. It appears that erased HI4 cells rapidly reaggregate owing to random collisions followed by tight cell cohesion. |
