Glutathione upregulates cAMP signalling via G protein alpha 2 during the development of Dictyostelium discoideum.

Despite the importance of glutathione in Dictyostelium, the role of glutathione synthetase (gshB/GSS) has not been clearly investigated. In this study, we observed that increasing glutathione content by constitutive expression of gshB leads to mound-arrest and defects in cAMP-mediated aggregation and developmental gene expression. The overexpression of gpaB encoding G protein alpha 2 (Gα2), an essential component of the cAMP signaling pathway, results in a phenotype similar to that caused by gshB overexpression, whereas gpaB knockdown in gshB-overexpressing cells partially rescues the abovementioned phenotypic defects. Furthermore, Gα2 is highly enriched at the plasma membrane of gshB-overexpressing cells compared to wild-type cells. Therefore, our findings suggest that glutathione upregulates cAMP signaling via Gα2 modulation during Dictyostelium development. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.