dictyNews Electronic Edition Volume 38, number 12 April 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 ========= Non-Brownian dynamics and strategy of amoeboid cell locomotion Nishimura, SI, Ueda, M and Sasai, M Physical Review E 85, 041909 (2012) Amoeboid cells such as Dictyostelium discoideum and Madin-Darby canine kidney cells show the non-Brownian dynamics of migration characterized by the superdiffusive increase of mean-squared displacement. In order to elucidate the physical mechanism of this non-Brownian dynamics, a computational model is developed which highlights a group of inhibitorymolecules for actin polymerization. Based on this model, we propose a hypothesis that inhibitory molecules are sent backward in the moving cell to accumulate at the rear of cell. The accumulated inhibitory molecules at the rear further promote cell locomotion to form a slow positive feedback loop of the whole-cell scale. The persistent straightforward migration is stabilized with this feedback mechanism, but the fluctuation in the distribution of inhibitory molecules and the cell shape deformation concurrently interrupt the persistent motion to turn the cell into a new direction. A sequence of switching behaviors between persistent motions and random turns gives rise to the superdiffusive migration in the absence of the external guidance signal. In the complex environment with obstacles, this combined process of persistent motions and random turns drives the simulated amoebae to solve the maze problem in a highly efficient way, which suggests the biological advantage for cells to bear the non-Brownian dynamics. Other information: Some movies (which are not included in the supporting material of this paper) are available on youtube! http://www.youtube.com/user/AmoebaSimulator Submitted by Shin I.Nishimura [shin@hiroshima-u.ac.jp] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOK CHAPTER Aiko Amagai Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University Japan Regulatory Mechanism in Sexual and Asexual Cycles of Dictyostelium p327-344, chapter 15 in ADVANCES IN SELECTED PLANT PHYSIOLOGY ASPECTS Edited by Giuseppe Montanaro and Bartolomeo Dichio Publisher: InTech, April, 2012 ISBN 978-953-51-0557-2 Hard cover, 388 pages Submitted by Aiko Amagai [aiamagai@amber.plala.or.jp] ============================================================== [End dictyNews, volume 38, number 12]