Investigations of Dictyostelium discoideum carriage of Burkholderia fungorumIn Proceedings of the American Chemical Society National Expo 2020 Philadelphia, PA. Retrieved from https://plan.core-apps.com/acsphilly2020/abstract/03183e82-9319-46e7-9274-211fe574b8d3.
Dictyostelium discoideum is a social amoeba that has been historically used as a model organism. In 2011, certain strains of Dictyostelium were found to carry food bacteria (E. coli) inside their sorus and across generations. It was then found that another factor was necessary for this carriage, since certain bacteria (ex. Burkholderia fungorum) were found to be ‘inducing’ this carriage. All previous work on this symbiosis was done using wild Dictyostelium, where the amoeba and inducing bacteria have been co-evolving for many generations. Our laboratory has shown that naïve lab Dictyostelium (ex. NC-4) can be induced to carry using Burkholderia. However, co-culturing the naïve amoeba and inducer yields lower bacterial carriage rates than with wild Dictyostelium, hinting that the wild symbiosis changes phenotypes over generations. Furthermore, separating inducing bacteria from the Dictyostelium at later life stages will result in no carriage, hinting at a more complex mechanism for bacterial uptake than simply initial exposure. Fluorescence microscopy has been used to visualize inducing bacteria within wild Dictyostelium spores. Therefore, this work addresses whether Burkholderia is found intracellularly in naïve lab Dictyostelium after being induced.
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