TY - JOUR TI - Evolution of multicellularity in Dictyostelia AU - Kawabe, Yoshinori AU - Du, Qingyou AU - Schilde, Christina AU - Schaap, Pauline T2 - The International Journal of Developmental Biology AB - The well-orchestrated multicellular life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum has fascinated biologists for over a century. Self-organisation of its amoebas into aggregates, migrating slugs and fruiting structures by pulsatile cAMP signalling and their ability to follow separate differentiation pathways in well-regulated proportions continue to be topics under investigation. A striking aspect of D. discoideum development is the recurrent use of cAMP as chemoattractant, differentiation inducing signal and second messenger for other signals that control the developmental programme. D. discoideum is one of >150 species of Dictyostelia and aggregative life styles similar to those of Dictyostelia evolved many times in eukaryotes. Here we review experimental studies investigating how phenotypic complexity and cAMP signalling co-evolved in Dictyostelia. In addition, we summarize comparative genomic studies of multicellular Dictyostelia and unicellular Amoebozoa aimed to identify evolutionary conservation and change in all genes known to be essential for D. discoideum development. PY - 2019 DO - 10.1387/ijdb.190108ps VL - 63 IS - 8-9-10 SP - 359 EP - 369 J2 - Int. J. Dev. Biol. LA - en SN - 0214-6282 SN - 1696-3547 UR - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/190108ps Y2 - 2024/12/14/05:45:19 ER -