Functional Characterisation of the Core Autophagy Protein ATG5 in Dictyostelium discoideum

Purpose: Global survey of the transcriptome in autophagy-deficient strains of D. discoideum Results: Our RNAseq analysis of ATG5?, ATG5?/12? and ATG5?/12?/16? cells revealed major transcriptional changes in a large number of genes in comparison to AX2 Conclusions: Our study presents a first detailed analysis of the transcriptome in autophagy-deficient strains of D. discoideum. The data were generated by RNA-seq technology. The optimised data analysis workflows reported here should provide a framework for comparative investigations of expression profiles. Our results show that NGS offers a comprehensive and more accurate quantitative and qualitative evaluation of mRNA content within a cell. We conclude that RNA-seq based transcriptome characterisation would expedite genetic network analyses and permit the dissection of complex biologic functions. Overall design: Total RNA from vegetative Dictyostelium discoideum cells (AX2 wild-type and ATG5?, ATG5?/12?, ATG5?/12?/16? mutant strains) was isolated as described [49], n=6, Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx