From comparative to functional genomics of social amoeba

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Gernot Glöckner (†); Professorin Dr. Angelika A. Noegel
• Subject Area: General Genetics and Functional Genome Biology
• Term: from 2006 to 2009
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 17424032

Social amoebae are a deep branching group in the eukaryote tree of life. One member of this branch, D. discoideum, is a valuable model organism to address questions concerning signal transduction, cell migration, cell differentiation, development and generation of multicellularity. Its genome has been sequenced and analysed and revealed an unexpectedly large gene catalogue, arguing that the seemingly simple organism has a 4 complexity nearly as high as a metazoan organism. The knowledge of the genome sequence will facilitate all aspects of further work on this organism and will also affect research in other species. To allow a deeper understanding of eukaryotic evolution and exploit the genome sequence in depth comparisons to genomes of other social amoebae are needed. The overall goals of this project are to identify novel protein families through a computational comparative analysis, to study the evolution of chromosome ends, to enhance the utility of the Dicytostelium discoideum sequence through finding conserved elements, particularly of regulatory sequences and of micro RNAs, and improving gene predictions and to study the evolution of the actin cytoskeleton and of GPCR signaling.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Ludwig Eichinger; Privatdozent Dr. Matthias Platzer