The Dictyostelium genome project: an invitation to species hopping

Dictyostelium allows some of the general problems of eukaryotic biology to be addressed by using molecular genetic tools that are more normally associated with yeast. The genome project, now underway, marks an important increase in the attractiveness of Dictyostelium as an experimental organism and will invite increased 'species hopping' by experimenters. We provide a brief guide to the problems that are being addressed in Dictyostelium, to the genome project itself and to the molecular genetic tools available for its exploitation.