•  
  •  
 

Keywords

OZK11A, macrocyst production

Abstract

Cellular slime molds, Dictyostelium, are bactivorous, soil-dwelling amoebae. When food is available, cells reproduce asexually by binary fission. Under certain environmental conditions, such as darkness and humidity, Dictyostelium reproduces sexually. The sexual cycle is uniquely social and has unusual features. First, sexual reproduction in most eukaryotes usually involves fusion of two gametes. But, in Dictyostelium, triparental inheritance is observed (Bloomfield et al. 2019), in which gamete fusion involves more than two gametes. Second, most eukaryotic species have two sexes or mating types, but Dictyostelium species are known to have more than two mating types. Even though Dictyostelium species show variations in sexual interactions, they look morphologically very similar. New natural isolates of Dictyostelium are generally identified and classified based on morphology (Hagiwara et al. 2004). Because variation in sexual interactions has genetic basis, many researchers agree that morphological species identification is not accurate, and that mating type identification be used to identify new isolates (Kawakami and Hagiwara 1999; Hagiwara et al. 2004). The goals of this project were 1) to identify the mating type of OZK11A (a natural isolate from the Ozark region of Arkansas) by gene presence/absence assay; and 2) to study macrocyst production by crossing cells of OZK11A strain with strains of known mating types. From the results of PCR, DNA sequencing and sexual crosses, we conclude that OZK11A is a mating type III, and it belongs to Dictyostelium discoideum species. We have also developed a novel, simple and cheap protocol to produce macrocyst.

Download

Share

COinS