HAPPY Days for the Dictyostelium Genome Project
- Jeffrey G. Williams1,3 and
- Richard A. Firtel2
- 1School of Biological Sciences, University of Dundee, MSI/WTB Complex, Dundee DD1 5EH, Scotland; 2Section of Cell and Developmental Biology and Center for Molecular Genetics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0634, USA
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
HAPPY mapping allows construction of a map of a piece of DNA without the need to clone it, thus avoiding many potential errors and artifacts (Dear and Cook 1993; Piper et al. 1999). The method is based on random DNA breakage and determination of linkage. The power and potential of the technique are well illustrated in the article by Konfortov et al. (2000, this issue). The authors use HAPPY mapping to construct a physical map of chromosome 6 ofDictyostelium. They map 300 sequence-tagged sites to the 4-mb chromosome, giving an average marker spacing of 14 kb. Some of the mapped sites fit with previously mapped sites, determined from an ordered YAC library (Kuspa and Loomis 1996), but many do not. Therein lies the rub, because these discrepancies posed a substantial, hidden threat to the Dictyostelium genome project. This map and the map now being constructed of the whole Dictyostelium genome (P. Dear, pers. comm.) have put the project firmly back on course. We will explain the original “unhappy” situation and what lessons can be learned for other genome projects. But first, we will give some information on the Dictyostelium genome project.
Why Sequence the Dictyostelium Genome?
To answer this question, it is necessary to answer the larger question: What is Dictyostelium? For a long time, botanists and zoologists both laid claim to it, but analysis of conserved protein sequences now indicates an evolutionary relationship much closer to animals than to plants and one that places it in the crown group of organisms (Loomis and Smith 1990; Baldauf and Doolittle 1997). This conclusion fits very well with the biology of the …
