The Dictyostelium Stock Center

描述(申请人提供)：简单的真核生物盘基网柄菌是一种模式生物，广泛用于研究细胞过程，如细胞运动、趋化、细胞分化、信号转导、人类疾病的分子基础、药物反应和耐药的细胞机制。作为一种必须与其他微生物竞争和防御的土壤居民，它产生了大量可能具有医学价值的次生代谢物。它能够从与其具有不同程度亲缘关系的其他细胞中识别自己，使其成为研究微生物生态系统中自我/非自我识别的一个有趣的模型。此外，它在植物和动物之间的系统发育地位使其成为比较基因组学研究中有用的有机体。所有这些研究都需要使用菌株，要么是野生型变种，要么是转基因菌株。自2002年以来，网柄菌属研究界一直受益于中央库存中心的存在。这一资源提供了一种成本效益高的手段，以确保菌株可用并在标准化条件下保持。股票中心目前由Richard Kessin和Jakob Franke(哥伦比亚大学)负责，他们将在当前资助期结束时退休。这项应用寻求支持，除了收集具有有趣表型特征的转基因菌株外，还可以继续收集已知的社会阿米巴物种和研究得很好的物种的分离物，如盘状阿米巴和紫色阿米巴。这提供了一个很好的机会将股票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的东道主，这使得西北大学成为股票中心最自然的选择。这项建议的目标有两个：(1)通过继续收集新的Dictyostelius和相关生物的天然分离物、产生表型的突变株、标记菌株以及有价值的资源，如cDNA文库和抗体，来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团体。迪迪库存中心已经建立了接收、测试和存储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。公共卫生相关性：真核生物盘基网眼菌为生物医学、遗传和环境领域的研究提供了一个直接的实验系统。重建Dicty Stock中心现有的大量菌株所需的资源远远超过存储它们的资源。通过确保所有重要菌株对整个研究界的可获得性，中央网柄菌库存中心的存在使使用这种微生物的所有研究更具成本效益。它还为研究人员提供了一种有效和独立的手段，以遵守NIH关于共享基于模型生物体的研究的材料的政策。

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. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE:The eukaryote Dictyostelium discoideum provides a straightforward experimental system for research in the biomedical, genetic, and environmental domains. The resources necessary to reconstruct the large number of strains available at the Dicty Stock Center far exceed those of storing them. The presence of a central Stock Center for Dictyostelium makes all research using this organism more cost-effective by ensuring the availability of all important strains to the entire research community. It also provides researchers an efficient and independent means of complying with NIH policies on sharing of materials from model organism based research.