dictyNews Electronic Edition Volume 27, number 10 September 29, 2006 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. =============== Announcement =============== Dear colleagues, The "Dictyostelium discoideum Protocols" book which was recently published in the "Methods in Molecular Biology" series from Humana Press can now be ordered from the Humana website (http://www.humanapress.com/ ; search for Dictyostelium). The price is $130,50. Best wishes Ludwig Eichinger [ludwig.eichinger@uni-koeln.de] Francisco Rivero [francisco.rivero@uni-koeln.de] ============= Abstracts ============= Necrotic cell death in a protist C Laporte1,2,3, A Kosta1,2,3, G Klein4, L Aubry4, D Lam1,2,3, E Tresse1,2,3, MF Luciani1,2,3 and P Golstein*,1,2,3 1Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Universitˇ de la Mˇditerranˇe, Case 906, 13288 Marseille Cedex 9, France; 2INSERM U631, 13288 Marseille cedex 9, France; 3CNRS UMR6102, 13288 Marseille cedex 9, France; 4CEA-Grenoble / DRDC / BBSI, UMR 5092 CNRS-CEA-UJF, 17, rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 09, France Cell Death and Differentiation, in press. Advanced online publication. doi: 10.1038/sj.cdd.4401994. While necrotic cell death is attracting considerable interest, its molecular bases are still poorly understood. Investigations in simple biological models, taken for instance outside the animal kingdom, may benefit from less interference from other cell death mechanisms and from better experimental accessibility, while providing phylogenetic information. Can necrotic cell death occur outside the animal kingdom ? In the protist Dictyostelium, developmental stimuli induced in an autophagy mutant a stereotyped sequence of events characteristic of necrotic cell death. This sequence included swift mitochondrial uncoupling with mitochondrial DC-FDA fluorescence, ATP depletion and increased oxygen consumption. This was followed by perinuclear clustering of dilated mitochondria. Rapid plasma membrane rupture then occurred, which was evidenced by time-lapse videos and quantified by FACS. Of additional interest, developmental stimuli and classical mitochondrial uncouplers triggered a similar sequence of events, and exogenous glucose delayed plasma membrane rupture in a non-glycolytic manner. The occurrence of necrotic cell death in the protist Dictyostelium (1) provides a very favorable model for further study of this type of cell death, and (2) strongly suggests that the mechanism underlying necrotic cell death was present in an ancestor common to the Amoebozoa protists and to animals and has been conserved in evolution. Submitted by: Pierre Golstein [golstein@ciml.univ-mrs.fr] ============================================================================== [End dictyNews, volume 27, number 10]