dictyNews Volume 39 Number 17

Published in

· 1 year ago

dictyNews 
Electronic Edition 
Volume 39, number 17 
June 14, 2013 

Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been 
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http://dictybase.org/db/cgi-bin/dictyBase/abstract_submit. 

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========= 
Abstracts 
========= 

 

ABC transporters in Dictyostelium discoideum development 

E.R. Miranda, O. Zhuchenko, M. Toplak, B. Santhanam, B. Zupan,  
A. Kuspa and G. Shaulsky 

Baylor College of Medicine and University of Ljubljana 

 
PLoS One, Accepted 

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters can translocate a broad  
spectrum of molecules across the cell membrane including physiological  
cargo and toxins. ABC transporters are known for the role they play in  
resistance towards anticancer agents in chemotherapy of cancer patients.  
There are 68 ABC transporters annotated in the genome of the social  
amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. We have characterized more than  
half of these ABC transporters through a systematic study of mutations in  
their genes. We have analyzed morphological and transcriptional  
phenotypes for these mutants during growth and development and found  
that most of the mutants exhibited rather subtle phenotypes. A few of the  
genes may share physiological functions, as reflected in their transcriptional  
phenotypes. Since most of the abc transporter mutants showed subtle  
morphological phenotypes, we utilized these transcriptional phenotypes to  
identify genes that are important for development by looking for transcripts  
whose abundance was  unperturbed in most of the mutants. We found a  
set of 668 genes that includes many validated D. discoideum developmental  
genes. We have also found that abcG6 and abcG18 may have potential  
roles in intercellular signaling during terminal differentiation of spores and  
stalks. 

  
Submitted by Gad Shaulsky [gadi@bcm.edu] 
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[End dictyNews, volume 39, number 17]