Identification and investigation of osmostress-induced genes in Dictyostelium

几乎所有的细胞，甚至是多细胞生物中的单个细胞，都受到渗透环境变化的影响，这种变化有时非常迅速。为了生存，细胞必须感知这些变化，并引发适当的反应，使它们能够适应。全面了解渗透胁迫反应需要详细了解细胞的各个方面，如信号传感和转导，转运过程和代谢的控制以及转录和翻译的差异调节。盘状盘基骨柱是一个强大的模型系统，用于大规模研究转录和翻译“适应变化的环境”。由于与高等真核生物的高度进化保守性，研究相关基因的分子遗传技术的最先进状态以及完整基因组序列和DNA微阵列的可用性，因此特别适合。在这个项目中，我们的目标是进一步分析高渗激活的STATc信号通路，同时分析低渗条件下的转录变化，并阐明两种反应的共性和差异。基于我们之前的研究结果，我们将生成和分析STATc通路中可疑关键信号基因的敲除和过表达菌株。这种方法将使我们能够进一步阐明STATc通路在低等真核生物高渗性反应中的作用，并将其组分与高等真核生物的组分进行比较。

Virtually all cells, even individual cells in multi-cellular organisms, are subject to changes in the osmotic environment that are sometimes extremely rapid. In order to survive cells have to sense these changes and to elicit an appropriate response that allows them to adapt. A comprehensive view on the osmotic stress response requires a detailed understanding of various cellular aspects such as signal sensing and transduction, control of transport processes and metabolism and differential regulation of transcription and translation. Dictyostelium discoideum is a powerful model system for large-scale studies of the transcriptional and translational „ adaptations to a changing environment. It is particularly suited because of the high degree of evolutionary conservation with higher eukaryotes, the state of the art armoury of molecular genetic techniques to investigate relevant genes and the availability of the complete genome sequence and of DNA microarrays. Our goals in this project are to further analyse the STATc signalling pathway activated by hyperosmolarity, to also analyse transcriptional changes in response to hypoosmotic conditions and to elucidate the commonalities and differences between the two responses. Based on our results in the previous grant we will generate and analyse knock-out and over-expressing strains of suspected key signalling genes of the STATc pathway. This approach should allow us to further elucidate the role oft he STATc pathway in response to hypertonicity in this lower eukaryote and to compare its components with those of higher eukaryotes.