UniProt release 13.2

Dictyostelium discoideum on the move

Dictyostelium discoideum is a social amoeba known for its ability to alternate between unicellular and multicellular forms. Thanks to the availability of powerful molecular genetic tools, it is a convenient model to study fundamental cellular processes, such as cytokinesis, motility, phagocytosis, chemotaxis, signal transduction and aspects of development, including cell sorting, pattern formation and cell-type determination. It is one of 9 nonmammalian model organisms recognized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their utility in the study of fundamental molecular processes of medical importance.

The 34 Mb genome of Dictyostelium discoideum was sequenced and assembled by an international consortium in 2005. Its gene-dense chromosomes encode approximately 12,500 predicted proteins, a high proportion of which have long, repetitive amino acid tracts.

In order to improve the coverage of functional annotation of Dictyostelium discoideum proteins, the UniProt consortium and dictyBase jointly organized a one-week Dictyostelium discoideum protein annotation jamboree in the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in Geneva last month. During this special event, more than 1,000 proteins were annotated by UniProtKB curators and about 30 gene models were corrected by dictyBase curators. In addition, more than 300 gene and protein names were standardized.

The close collaboration between UniProtKB and dictyBase will continue until the completion of Dictyostelium discoideum proteome annotation, planned for 2010.

UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot current release contains 1,803 fully annotated Dictyostelium discoideum entries, which represents about 15% of the complete proteome. A complete non-redundant set of Dictyostelium discoideum proteins can be retrieved from UniProtKB with the keyword 'Complete proteome'.