Immunity in social amoeba suggests ancient beginnings
Finding an immune system in the social amoeba (Dictyostelium discoideum) is not only surprising but it also may prove a clue as to what is necessary for an organism to become multicellular, said the Baylor College of Medicine researcher who led the research that appears today in the journal Scie...Press conferences at the year's largest physics meeting
...on will present evidence that even a single-celled amoeba forages for food in a nonrandom way, and seems to "remember" its previous steps as it searches for food. Frank Moss, paper D34,10 Liang Li, paper U35.4, Ido Braslavsky, J35.8. Press Conference, Tuesday, March 6, 11 am PHYSICS FOR MEDICINE Using ...Largest physics meeting of the year, in Denver
...But for the first time, the hunting strategy of an amoeba has been shown to be somewhat better than random. The amoeba called Dictyostelium seems to remember its previous steps -- which it performs by pumping itself int...Scientists' cell discovery unearths evolutionary clues
...sly, there was almost no molecular data for social amoeba Dictyostelia which are a hugely diverse and anci...the first time the family tree of all known social amoeba species and the evolution of their multicellular life style. "This provides a starting point in a...Caterpillars tell us how bacteria cause disease
... have been interacting with simple animals such as amoeba and insects for a staggering length of evolutionary time. It seems likely that most virulence genes around today probably first evolved to work against these hosts". With funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council's (BB...A 'recent' embosymbiont -- a rare evolutionary example -- offers clues to how plants came to be
... sequences contained in the plastid of the thecate amoeba Paulinella, researchers have shown that it is a recent endosymbiont whose genome features are virtually unchanged from those of its cyanobacterial progenitor. The findings, which help elucidate how plastid organelles arise from endosymbiosis, are rep......ng a copy of a specific part of that gene into the amoeba cell nucleus. Introducing the plasmid led to the modification of DNA "packing" proteins, causing the DNA-protein packages to become more tightly coiled something like a tangled telephone cord and causing an irreversible silencing of gene expression...Einstein researchers take the pulse of a gene in living cells
...s a gene important in the life cycle of the social amoeba Dictyostelium, thousands of which sometimes aggregate into a single slug-like mass. This developmental gene plays a major role in transforming the "slug" into a stalk-like structure called a fruiting body, which releases new amoebae. "The pulsing we ...Single cell amoeba increases MRSA numbers 1000- fold
Scientists in the UK have found that a type of amoeba acts as an incubator for MRSA bacteria. As amoebae... bacteria. "We need more research into the role of amoeba in the spread of MRSA hospitals should aim to eradicate amoebae as well as the bacteria themselves"...MBL scientists to present research at 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting
...documented the occurrence and repeated recovery of amoeba cultures positive for legionellae from the coastal...sediment samples. Sediments were also enriched for amoeba cultures by agar plate methods, and amoeba isolates were processed for nucleic acids. All samples we...Research bolsters controversial hypothesis on genome size and evolution
...ays true. There are some species of frogs and some amoeba that have much larger genomes than humans." To help explain this paradox, a pair of scientists from Indiana University and the University of Oregon published a hotly-constested hypothesis in 2003. It said that most of the mutations that arise in orga...Social amoeba sheds light on communication in human brain
... sedative Valium has similar effects on the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum as it does in humans. The... molecule found in human brains, causes the social amoeba to enter a dormant or "sleep" phase, may provide new insights into how cells in higher organisms, in...Genome of a social amoeba sequenced for the first time
...and France have sequenced the genome of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. The results of their res...her sequenced genome. Understanding how the social amoeba is able to tolerate this type of protein could pave the way to novel therapeutic approaches. Starvat...Biologists determine genetic blueprint of social amoeba
...print of Dictyostelium discoideum, a simple social amoeba long used by researchers as a model genetic system... the genetic blueprint of Dictyostelium, the first amoeba genome to be sequenced, has clarified the place that Dictyostelium occupies in the hierarchy of life...Genome of social amoeba shows its importance as research model
...005) -- The sequencing of the genome of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum reveals new information a...rom Baylor College of Medicine. "This is the first amoeba genome to be completely sequenced," saidDr. Adam Kuspa, professor of biochemistry and molecular biol...New strategies to reduce hospital-acquired infections
...e of these harmful pathogens are also protected by amoeba that are resistant to chlorination, temperature and osmotic pressure. The amoeba acts as a "Trojan Horse" harboring and transporting the microbes. Amoebas with waterborne resistant......stelium (Dictyostelium discoideum), a form of soil amoeba used in the laboratory because many of its 10,000 genes are homologues or equivalents of genes found in humans. Using microarray data alone, they determined the orders in which genes function in a particular pathway in that organism. The protein kin...NHGRI targets 12 more organisms for genome sequencing
...aulti and Nasonia longicornis); a free-living soil amoeba (Acanthamoeba castellanii); and three fungi (Schizosaccharomyces octosporus, Schizosaccharomyces japonicus, Batrachochytridium dendrobatidis). It has been shown that most sequences of the human genome originated long before humans themselves...Genome of deadly amoeba shows surprising complexity, evidence of lateral gene transfer
...ockville, MD The genome sequence of the parasitic amoeba Entamoeba histolytica, a leading cause of severe d...n the unusual shared biology between the parasitic amoeba and anaerobic gut bacteria. The E. histolytica genome sequence is expected to help in the deve......s. Recently, he has turned his focus to the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Strassmann and Queller are currently using well-developed genetic and genomic resources for Dictyostelium discoideum to find genes involved in social interactions, and they are using those genes to test evolutionary hy...