The cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum provides a genetically, biochemically, and molecularly tractable system in which to study signal transduction pathways controlling temporal and spatial regulation during multicellular development. It has many advantages over other developmental systems in that a combination of biochemistry and molecular genetics can be used to examine processes controlling multicellular development. Analyses of regulatory pathways controlling development in this organism have shown that many have direct parallels with known pathways in more complex systems including C. elegans, Drosophila, and mammals. In this Project, we propose to identify genes essential for development in this organism. For this, we will use REMI (Restriction Enzyme Mediated Integration) combined with restriction endonucleases that are expected to contain sites within all genes that affect, but are not essential for cell growth and multicellular development. The identified genes will be sequenced as part of this Program Project. The genes identified in this manner will act as a resource to be used in other studies aimed at understanding how signaling pathways regulate development in this system. Such studies combined with the sequence information derived from the efforts of this Program should thus provide a sequence data base with insights into the biochemical function of the gene product. This information is expected to provide a basis for understanding how development is regulated in other systems.
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