Model Organisms for Biomedical Research
Dictyostelium discoideumNational Institutes of Health

Dictyostelium discoideum is a soil-living amoeba. The hereditary information is carried on six chromosomes with sizes ranging from 4 to 7 Mb resulting in a total of about 34 Mb of DNA, a multicopy 90 kb extrachromosomal element that harbors the rRNA genes, and the 55 kb mitochondrial genome. The estimated number of genes in the genome is 8,000 to 10,000 and many of the known genes show a high degree of sequence similarity to genes in vertebrate species. Additional information about Dictyostelium discoideum can be found by visiting these websites:

http://dictybase.org/tutorial/
http://dictybase.org/genomeseq.htm

Major Resources
dictyBase - An Online Informatics Resource for Dictyostelium
dictyBase (http://dictybase.org) provides a single access point for information about the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, including genome and functional annotations, curated Dictyostelium literature, tools for discovering homology and functional relationships using BLAST and Gene Ontology annotations, investigators involved in Dictyostelium research, overviews of Dictyostelium biology and the Dicty Stock Center. For more information, please contact dictyBase at dictybase@northwestern.edu.
Dicty WorkBench Genome Annotation and Analysis Portal - This site provides interested researchers an easy interface to Dictyostelium genome annotation and analysis tools. The Dicty database available at Dicty Workbench is based on Oracle and provides BLAST, RPS-BLAST and PFAM analysis data. We hope this tool will immensely facilitate the use of genome sequence information generated by the Dicty genome project. Questions, comments and suggestions regarding this portal may be addressed to: reddy@sdsc.edu
Genome Project - The Dictyostelium discoideum genome project is an international collaboration. The major collaborators are the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton; the University of Cologne and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Jena; and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
BLAST Searches - To facilitate the community's use of the sequences that are rapidly being generated by the Dictyostelium discoideum genome project, scientists can perform BLAST searches of all sequences via the San Diego Super Computer Center.
cDNA Project - Several Japanese universities are involved in a cDNA project. These institutions are: University of Tsukuba, Hokkaido University, Kinki University and Osaka University. The goal of this project is to structurally and functionally analyze whole expressed genes in developing Dictyostelium discoideum cells.

IC Contact
 

Judith H. Greenberg, Ph.D.
National Institute of General Medical Science
Building 45, Room 2As25
45 Center Drive, MSC 6200
Bethesda, MD 20892-6200

TEL: (301)-594-0943
FAX: (301)-480-2228
E-MAIL: greenbej@nigms.nih.gov
NIGMS Home Page URL: http://www.nih.gov/nigms/