Crawling into a new era-the Dictyostelium genome project

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 whole chromosome shotgun approach. The pacemaker of the D.discoideum genome project has been chromosome 2, the largest chromosome, which at 8 Mb represents approximately 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.