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Researchers in Cologne and Jena Part of International Effort to Understand Model Organism

Dictyostelium discoideum

An international consortium funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the European Union, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the United States, and the Medical Research Council in Great Britain is working on sequencing the genome of a soil amoeba considered to be a model organism and therefore useful in cell and developmental biology. A team led by researchers in Cologne and Jena has recently announced a significant advance in the effort, the results of which appear in the July 4 edition of Nature.

Dictyostelium as slime mold

Dictyostelium discoideum is a rather ugly slime mold living on the forest floor, but it is valued by researchers for what it has in common with vertebrates and other more complex organisms. Over the course of its transformation from one cell to a multi-cellular organism, its development is similar to that of a vertebrate zygote into an embryo. Among other characteristics, it exhibits complex signaling pathways as well as chemical sensing like that seen in white blood cells. The complete sequencing of its genome, estimated to consist of more than 10,000 genes on six chromosomes, will allow researchers to learn the functions of vertebrate genes that control critical aspects of embryonic development. A team of researchers is each working on one of the six chromosomes, with sequencing going on in Cologne, Jena, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and the Sanger Center in Great Britain.

University of Cologne

Recently, the team led by the University of Cologne’s Institute for Biochemistry and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Jena, announced the sequencing of chromosome 2, the first to be completed. Analysis of the sequence, representing about 25% of the genome, has already aided in the further understanding of the organism by indicating that it is more closely linked to animals than to plants. The results have been published in a paper by Dr. Gernot Glöckner of Jena, et al, in the July 4 edition of Nature.

The Dictyostelium genome project began in 1998 as a DFG-funded project to sequence chromosomes 1 and 2, making the German-led project a leader in fundamental research in this field. The DFG has provided 3.8 million euros for the work at Cologne and Jena over the past three years. In the meantime, the project has become one of international cooperation to sequence the entire genome.

July 10, 2002

University of Cologne