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灯台

Design Biology

Bioinformatics

Systems biology

Synthetic biology

Molecular biology

Microbiology

Genomics

Molecular ecology

Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University

403-1, Daihouji, Tsuruoka, Yamagata, 997-0017, Japan

Phone: +81-235-29-0526
Email: ciconia [at] sfc.keio.ac.jp

Aim

To quantitatively describe the design principles of a life and to achieve full scratch-and-build.

Latest Publication

Masui, Yamamoto, Kono, 2024

Myxomycetes have an allorecognition system that can only discriminate between intraspecies

bioRxiv, 10.1101/2024.02.15.580440

Myxomycetes are multinucleate unicellular organisms. They form a plasmodium that moves by protoplasmic flow and prey on microorganisms. When encountering intraspecifics, the plasmodium has the capacity for ‘fusion’, actively approaching and fusing its cells, or ‘avoidance’, altering its direction to avoid the other individual. This is an allorecognition ability. However, it remains unclear whether the range of allorecognition extends to other species, and its ecological significance is also obscure. Here, we conduct a quantitative evaluation of contact responses from closely related species of plasmodium to clarify the recognition range of the allorecognition system in Myxomycetes. Behavioral assays demonstrate that the allorecognition system recognizes individuals within the same species while failing to recognize those of different species. The allorecognition is an extremely narrow and inward-focused mechanism, arguing for a highly specialized system of self-other recognition.

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