Identification and investigation of osmostress-induced genes in Dictyostelium

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Ludwig Eichinger
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Zellbiologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2009 bis 2016
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 135883787

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.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen