The Dictyostelium Stock Center

描述（由申请人提供）：简单真核生物盘基网柄藻是一种广泛用于研究细胞过程的模式生物，如细胞运动性、趋化性、细胞分化、信号转导、人类疾病的分子基础、对药物的反应和耐药性的细胞机制。作为一种必须与其他微生物竞争并保护自己的土壤居民，它产生了大量可能具有医学价值的次级代谢产物。它能够从与它具有不同程度遗传关系的其他细胞中识别自己，这使得它成为研究微生物生态系统中自我/非自我识别的迷人模型。此外，它在植物和动物之间的交叉点的系统发育位置使其成为包括在比较基因组学研究中的有用生物。所有这些研究都需要使用菌株，无论是野生型变异株还是转基因株。自2002年以来，Dictyosteoblasts研究社区受益于中央库存中心的存在。这种资源提供了一种具有成本效益的方法，确保菌株可用并保持在标准化条件下。股票中心目前由理查德·凯辛和雅各布·弗兰克（哥伦比亚大学）监督，他们将在目前的资助期结束时退休。本申请寻求支持，以继续收集已知的社会性阿米巴和分离的充分研究的物种，如D。discoideum和D. purpureum，除了具有有趣的表型特征的遗传修饰菌株。这提供了一个很好的机会，可以将库存中心和盘基网柄菌基因组资源dictyBase更紧密地联系在一起。西北大学是dictyBase的主办方，这使得西北大学成为股票中心的最自然的选择。该提案的目标有两个：（1）通过继续收集新的网囊藻和相关生物的天然分离物、产生表型的突变体、标记菌株以及cDNA文库和抗体等宝贵资源，维持和扩大库存中心的收藏;（2）将库存中心的材料分发给研究界。Dicty库存中心已经建立了接收、测试和储存菌株和质粒的标准操作程序，我们将致力于继续执行这些政策和程序，因为它们在为社区提供服务方面非常成功。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The simple eukaryote Dictyostelium discoideum is a model organism widely used for the study of cellular processes such as cell motility, chemotaxis, cellular differentiation, signal transduction, the molecular basis of human diseases, the response to drugs and the cellular mechanisms of drug resistance. As a soil dweller that must compete and defend itself against other micro-organisms, it produces a vast array of secondary metabolites that could be of medical interest. Its ability to recognize itself from other cells with which it bears varying degrees of genetic relationship makes it an fascinating model for the study of self/non-self recognition in microbial ecosystems. Moreover, its phylogenetic position at the intersection between plants and animals makes it a useful organism to include in comparative genomics studies. All those studies require the use of strains, either wild type variants or genetically modified. Since 2002, the Dictyostelium research community has benefited from the presence of a central Stock Center. This resource provides a cost-effective means of ensuring that strains are available and maintained in standardized conditions. The Stock Center is currently overseen by Richard Kessin and Jakob Franke (Columbia University) who will retire at the end of the current funding period. This application seeks support to carry on collecting the known species of social amoebae and isolates of well-studied species like D. discoideum and D. purpureum, in addition to genetically modified strains that have interesting phenotypic characteristics. This provides a great opportunity to move the Stock Center and the Dictyostelium discoideum genome resource, dictyBase, closer together. Northwestern University is the host for dictyBase, making Northwestern the most natural choice for housing the Stock Center. The goals of this proposal are twofold: (1) maintain and expand the Stock Center collection by continuing to collect new natural isolates of Dictyostelium and related organisms, mutants that produce phenotypes, marked strains, as well as valuable resources such as cDNA libraries and antibodies; and (2) distribute the materials from the Stock Center to the research community. The Dicty Stock Center has established standard operating procedures for receiving, testing and storing strains and plasmids that we will commit to continuing these policies an procedures as they have been very successful in providing service to the community.