dictyNews Electronic Edition Volume 43, number 5 March 17, 2017 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 ========= Protein Kinase A regulates the Ras, Rap1, and TORC2 pathways in response to the chemoattractant cAMP in Dictyostelium Margarethakay Scavello, Alexandra R. Petlick, Ramya Ramesh, Valery F. Thompson, Pouya Lotfi, and Pascale G. Charest. Journal of Cell Science, in press Efficient directed migration requires tight regulation of chemoattractant signal transduction pathways in both space and time, but the mechanisms involved in such regulation are not well understood. Here, we investigated the role of Protein Kinase A (PKA) in controlling signaling of the chemoattractant cAMP in Dictyostelium. We found that cells lacking PKA display severe chemotaxis defects, including impaired directional sensing. Although PKA is an important regulator of developmental gene expression, including the cAMP receptor cAR1, our studies using exogenously expressed cAR1 in cells lacking PKA, cells lacking adenylyl cyclase A (ACA), and cells treated with the PKA-selective pharmacological inhibitor H89, suggest that PKA controls chemoattractant signal transduction, in part, through the regulation of RasG, Rap1, and TORC2. As these pathways control the ACA-mediated production of intracellular cAMP, they lie upstream of PKA in this chemoattractant signaling network. Consequently, we propose that the PKA-mediated regulation of the upstream RasG, Rap1, and TORC2 signaling pathways is part of a negative feedback mechanism controlling chemoattractant signal transduction during Dictyostelium chemotaxis. submitted by: Pascale Charest [pcharest@email.arizona.edu] ============================================================== [End dictyNews, volume 43, number 5]