The Organism
Dictyostelium discoideum is a soil amoeba widely used as a model organism
in cell and developmental biology. The amoeba shares many physiological functions
seen in mammalian cells and is amenable to genetic manipulation. The underlying
changes in gene expression that occur under these conditions, inter alia,
are amenable to microarray analyses.
The Microarray Resource
The Wellcome Trust funded the resource under the Functional Genomics Initiative.
We have constructed a microarray currently consisting of ~9K features(spots) printed in duplicate. Our strategy is to amplify gene segments by PCR, ensuring
as much specificity as possible for each gene. Our array has been designed using gene predictions on data obtained from the
international sequencing effort.
Our aim is to provide through collaborations a resource for the Dictyostelium community who would like to use microarray technology in their research.
We have the facilities to perform all aspects of using microarrays, and encourage anyone interested to discuss their requirements with
us. We are able to provide limited facilities to collaborators who wish to undertake the experiments themselves or we can also distribute
slides to those interested that have their own facilites for carrying out experiments and analysis.
If you would like to gain access to the arrays, please read the application details section below where you will find information on designing experiments for array use,
resource guidance notes and a project proposal form.
NOTE: The funding terminates July 30th 2007, and we are thus unable to accept ne w project applications.