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Crawling into a new era—the Dictyostelium genome project
Author(s) -
Eichinger Ludwig,
Noegel Angelika A.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
the embo journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 7.484
H-Index - 392
eISSN - 1460-2075
pISSN - 0261-4189
DOI - 10.1093/emboj/cdg214
Subject(s) - biology , dictyostelium , crawling , genome , computational biology , genetics , evolutionary biology , bioinformatics , gene , anatomy
The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is a well‐established model organism for the study of basic aspects of differentiation, signal transduction, phagocytosis, cytokinesis and cell motility. Its genome is being sequenced by an international consortium using a w hole c hromosome s hotgun approach. The pacemaker of the D.discoideum genome project has been chromosome 2, the largest chromosome, which at 8 Mb represents ∼25% of the genome and whose sequence and analysis have been published recently. Chromosomes 1 and 6 are close to being finished. To accelerate completion of the genome sequence, the next step in the project will be a whole‐genome assembly followed by the analysis of the complete gene content. The completed genome sequence and its analysis provide the basis for genome‐wide functional studies. It will position Dictyostelium at the same level as other model organisms and further enhance its experimental attractiveness.