The evolution and regulation of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton.

The two most common cytoskeletal polymers—actin and microtubules—evolved over a billion years ago and are used by animals, plants, and microbial eukaryotes to control essential cell behaviors, including feeding, movement, and cell division. Although cytoskeletal polymers themselves are highly conserved across species, the structures they build are wildly variable. We seek to understand how the cytoskeleton, a system that controls essential cellular functions, evolves and diversifies across eukaryotic phyla. Answering this question, however, is impossible using traditional model systems. We are therefore developing new model systems that display diverse cytoskeletal phenotypes and occupy appropriate positions on the eukaryotic tree. We are rapidly developing genetic tools for two species; the deadly “brain-eating amoeba” Naegleria and the frog-killing chytrid fungus that is devastating global ecosystems. We are using these new genetic tools to discover key steps in the evolution of cytoskeletal complexity while making fundamental discoveries about these important species.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis is a fungal disease devastating amphibian populations world-wide. Based on evolutionary conservation of actin regulators, we predicted that this organism is capable of fast, pseudopod-based crawling motility. This prediction proved correct, but only during a few hours of its lifecycle, potentially during amphibian infection. These “zoospore” cells lack cell walls, build dynamic pseudopods, and crawl at ~40 microns per minute in confined environments. Chytrid pseudopods are filled with polymerized actin that requires Arp2/3 activity for assembly. Pseudopod-building cells also construct actin-rich cortical networks. Within several hours after birth, zoospores lose the ability to build pseudopods and begin to assemble chitinous cell walls. This transition appears to coincide with disassembly of the majority of cortical actin, leaving regions of polymerized actin reminiscent of the actin patches of walled fungal cells. We are currently investigating this transition between what appears to be an actin cytoskeleton similar to that of professionally migratory amoeboid cells (e.g. Dictyostelium and white blood cells), to an actin cytoskeleton which seems to echo that of yeast.

Naegleria

Naegleria gruberi takes on two extremely different forms during its lifecycle: an amoeba that crawls using actin, and a flagellate that swims with two flagella. The rapid differentiation between these forms makes Naegleria a prime model for understanding both types of cell motility. The differentiation from crawling amoebae to swimming flagellates involves assembling an entire microtubule cytoskeleton de novo, including two basal bodies (centrioles), the two flagella (cilia) that they pattern, and an entire cortical microtubule array. The process of differentiation includes transcribing and translating all of the microtubule cytoskeletal components—including tubulin— yet takes only 60-90 minutes. In the laboratory, we can induce cells to undergo this differentiation extremely synchronously. We are currently developing molecular tools for genetic engineering of Naegleria, as well as using transcriptional profiling to understand global changes occuring during the transition between the two forms of motility.