Dictyostelium chemotactic response to spatial and temporal gradients. Theories of the limits of chemotactic sensitivity and of pseudochemotaxis

Abstract

Four aspects of ameboid cell chemotaxis are discussed: 1) Ameboid cells (Dictyostelium discoideum, leukocytes) might orient to chemotaxin gradients by sensing a spatial gradient or a temporal change in the concentration. Using a moving micropipette source of cAMP, we show the D discoideum cells can orient toward the gradient in which the concentration is everywhere decreasing with time-implying a spatial mechanism. 2) The number of molecules N that must be released by a source to orient a cell is limited by the natural concentration "noise" due to diffusion. N is shown to be simply related to the cell size and the distance from the source. 3) We show that previous diffusion equations for cell population movement have not taken the speed variations (klinokinesis) into account properly, and we present a new result that does. 4) We briefly discuss reaction-diffusion models of cell orientation.