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- Dictyostelium discoideum, a soil-living amoeba, is an excellent organism for the study of the molecular mechanisms of cell motility, signal transduction, cell-type differentiation and developmental processes. Genes involved in any of these processes can be knocked-out rapidly by targeted homologous recombination.
- Dictyostelium discoideum is used in molecular biology and genetics (its genome has been sequenced), and is studied as an example of cell communication, differentiation, and programmed cell death.
- The sequencing and the analysis of the genome of Dictyostelium discoideum is an international collaboration between the University of Cologne, Germany (Cologne), the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Jena, Germany (Jena), the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, USA (Baylor), the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France (Pasteur), and the Sanger Centre in Hinxton, England (Sanger).
- The methodology used for sequencing the genome is shotgun sequencing of separated chromosomes.
- All parties contribute in sequencing chromosome 6 (app. 4 Mb), Baylor and Sanger collaborate in sequencing chromosomes 4 and 5 (app. 6.2 and 5.3 Mb) and Jena and Cologne are concentrating on chromosomes 1, 2 and 3 (app. 5.5, 7 and 5.3 Mb respectively).
- D. discoideum has a 34 Mb haploid genome with a base composition of 77% [A+T]. It consists of 6 chromosomes encoding approximately 12,500 proteins.
- Dictyostelium discoideum is a soil amoeba widely used as a model organism in cell and developmental biology. The amoeba shares many physiological functions seen in mammalian cells and is amenable to genetic manipulation.
- Sequence data and preliminary analysis data can be accessed through GeneDB.
- This Human Disease Causing Gene Homologues in Dictyostelium discoideum (HDGDD) is a collection of Dictyostelium genes homologous to human disease associated genes in this favourite eucaryotic model organism for biomedical research.
- 1410 Human disease associated genes identified from Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) were compared with Dictyostelium genome by BLAST comparisons.
- Many phases of health and disease depend on the behaviours of individual cells so beautifully displayed in D. discoideum.
- Dictyostelium discoideum is a powerful system for basic biomedical research in cell and developmental biology.
- The organism has unique advantages for studying fundamental cellular processes with powerful molecular genetic tools.
- Infectious diseases such as Malaria, Legionnaire?s disease, Salmonellosis, Tuberculosis, Lysteriosis, amoebic dysentry, and Pseudomoniasis are caused directly by amebae or involve ameboid hosts.
- One of the incredible strengths of this model system is the capacity to track the dynamic behaviours of individual cells.
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