Editorial: Dictyostelium: A Tractable Cell and Developmental Model in Biomedical Research

Dictyostelium: A Tractable Cell and Developmental Model in Biomedical ResearchFor almost a century, the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum has been used as an inexpensive and high-throughput model system for studying a variety of fundamental cellular and developmental processes including cell movement, chemotaxis, differentiation, and autophagy (Müller-Taubenberger et al., 2013;Mathavarajah et al., 2017).The life cycle of Dictyostelium is comprised of a unicellular growth phase and a 24-h multicellular developmental phase with distinct stages (Figure 1A).Dictyostelium development shares many common features with metazoan development but occurs in a much shorter time frame, which allows for the rapid detection of developmental phenotypes.The fully sequenced, low redundancy genome of Dictyostelium provides a less complex system to work with, whilst still maintaining many genes and related signalling pathways found in more complex eukaryotes (Eichinger et al., 2005).The Dictyostelium genome is haploid, which allows researchers to introduce one or multiple gene disruptions with relative ease, and gene function can be studied in a true multicellular organism with measurable phenotypic outcomes (Kuspa, 2006;Faix et al., 2013;Friedrich et al., 2015;Sekine et al., 2018).In addition, insertional mutant libraries facilitate pharmacogenetics screens that have enhanced our understanding of the function of bioactive compounds at a cellular level (Damstra Oddy et al., 2021;Warren et al., 2020).Finally, a variety of expression constructs are available that enable studies on protein localization and function in Dictyostelium (Levi et al., 2000;Veltman et al., 2009;Müller-Taubenberger and Ishikawa-Ankerhold, 2013).More recently, Dictyostelium has emerged as a valuable biomedical model system for studying several human diseases.The genome encodes orthologs of genes associated with human disease and the signalling pathways that regulate the behaviour of Dictyostelium cells are remarkably similar to those observed in mammalian cells, which has allowed findings from Dictyostelium to be successfully translated to mammalian systems (Alexander and Alexander, 2011;Chang et al., 2012).As a result, Dictyostelium has, and will continue to offer, excellent opportunities to advance biomedical research.This Research Topic contains 23 articles that showcase the use of Dictyostelium as a tractable cell, molecular, and developmental model system in biomedical research, and includes two methods articles that enhance the biomedical applications of this valuable model organism (Figure 1B).Yamashita et al. describe the application of CRISPR-based gene disruption in Dictyostelium, while Williams et al. report the development of a new positive selection high throughput genetic screen.The use of Dictyostelium as a model system for studying fundamental cellular and developmental processes is well established and this Research Topic contains several articles describing new findings on conserved processes in Dictyostelium with biomedical relevance (Figure 1B).

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