Altruism and social cheating in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum

摘要: The social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, is widely used as a simple model organism for multicellular development, but its fruiting stage really society. Most of the time, D. discoideum lives haploid, free-living, amoeboid cells that divide asexually. When starved, 10(4)-10(5) these aggregate into slug. anterior 20% slug altruistically differentiates non-viable stalk, supporting remaining cells, most which become viable spores. If aggregating come from multiple clones, there should be selection clones to exploit other by contributing less than their proportional share sterile stalk. Here we use microsatellite markers show different collected field population readily mix form chimaeras. Half chimaeric mixtures clear cheater and victim. Thus, unlike clonal highly cooperative development organisms, partly competitive, with conflicts interests among cells. These complicate some aspects they make it attractive system evolution.