Data for Figures 4 B, C, D, E, F

RasD activity affects cell fate choice but not cell cycle dynamics

B. RasD activity and nutrition affect stalk cell differentiation in monolayer cultures. Decreased Ras activity (rasD- or gefE-) significantly reduced stalk cell differentiation at 10 nM DIF-1 (3 replicates). In contrast, increased RasD activity (AX3rasD(G12T)) significantly increased the percentage of prestalk cells (t-test: p=0.0088; p=0.0012; p=0.0001).
C. Cell cycle length is not affected by RasD activity.
The growth rate of wild type AX3, gefE-, rasD- mutant and RasDG12T cells was measured in culture. Error bars are standard error of mean of four replicates.
D. Cell cycle phase lengths are unaffected by RasD activity. PCNA localization was used to determine S and G2 length. There is no significant difference in S phase lengths, whereas total cell cycle and G2 phase lengths of G- grown cells in wild type and gefE- are significantly longer.
E and F. Stalk cell propensity decreases in gefE- G+ and gefE- G- cells. gefE- G+ cells that divided up to 2 hours before induction have a higher propensity to become prespore cells. gefE- G- cell propensity to become prespore cells is higher than AX3 G- cells at almost all time points/cell cycle phases.